Synergy ruined crafting for me

[Bhujerba]

Synergy is luck based, try to do perfect elemental balance solo, you may succeed in the first try or you may take an hour or 2 trying, because of that and latency playing part too, Synergy is not hard, its annoying and hardly require any skill whatsoever.

The only true benefit I see from Synergy is that it allow a different user to use their materials without trading, which technically allow you to "craft" rare/ex materials/equipments, because with crafting, it's impossible to do it within the game rules of trading, Evolith and the new upcoming Augmenting system will explore this very feature of Synergy.

[RushLynx]

I'm glad someone else is willing to admit that there's nothing particularly difficult about choosing options from a series of menus and observing the effects... I feel like there are an awful lot of people on these forums that try to rationalize the overwhelming number of people that dislike synergy with the idea that those people are just too lazy or dumb to be able to do it...

[blowfin]

ITT: Liking Synergy makes you a greedy, selfish person.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

In reality: Old crafts were Selfish.

[Bhujerba]

everyone is selfish, how do you suppose I get my revenge on the community!?
good and bad people suffer, Revenge is blind.

[Felren]

There is no reason synergy should be the one to make all the best stuff. We worked hard for our crafts in time, gil and dedication. We arent denying you did as well. Syngergy isnt the god of crafting and shouldnt be. It is just another craft.

This is probably the thing I agree with most. People would say the reason for synergy having all the best stuff right now is because it incorporates all other crafts in itself. Having someone stand there to meet a base synergy requirement however isn't a creative way to involve that crafter in the synthesis in my opinion. It seems lazy.

What I like about synergy-

No fail chance- Losing materials in normal synthesis on a craft you are way above cap very much so makes you feel semi-useless. A high level cook can make an exquisite cake made of many materials that can feed a group of people. Also, sometimes that high level cook can sometimes fail horribly at making a cheese sandwich. With synergy this isn't a problem. You only have to compensate a failed synthesis with a small amount of gil.

Synergist crafting benefits- There are some synergy synthesis that result in like a warp stone or something of the sort. This to me feels like a self-reward to the synergist by getting to a high enough level to make them. There really isn't anything like this in other crafts. I don't want it to get to the point like it is in WoW, but I think people with a high level craft should be able to make something special that is EX like synergists have.

What I do not like:

One of FFXI's strong points is certainly not interacting with NPCs. I don't really think making a craft based on interacting with an NPC was a pretty bad idea. Just like making besieged was a pretty bad idea when FFXI is so limited how many players/enemies it can view on the screen at once. Now synergy is not that horrible after you know where everything is on the menu however. You can pretty much spam enter and make selections before you can even read them to speed up the process. Honestly, what astounds me most is that synergy has a time constraint. In this craft they give you several decisions to make with a slow loading clunky UI. And you are restricted on time. It really isn't a friendly system..... You have to know where the selections are to know where everything is so you can start toggling between selections before they load. Some people may call this "skill". It may be, but is skill that wasn't mean to be there. It is skill dealing with the outdated UI system. You are battling the UI system, not the craft process itself.



Synergy THE new craft, not A new craft- Like annewandering said, synergy is not a craft, it is THE craft. I'd be completely fine if synergy was a seperate craft, with its only special stuff it makes. But it isn't however, it is the craft that gets all the new high end gear. Other crafts (other than cooking I guess) are being neglected with the new recipes they rightfully deserve. These other crafts have been along way longer, and at the looks of how the dev team likes to implement new items ever since synergy came out, I really think synergy will be getting all the crafting love even up at 99 at this rate. If people want it changed they will have to say something. The minority of the FFXI community with completed relic weapons have uproared their opinion of relic weapons being underpowered. They were heard and responded to.
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Will the devs treat crafting the same way if enough people complain? Maybe..... They have invested a lot of time into synergy. They could easily stop funneling every single high level piece of gear into synergy only, and start separating the gear out between different crafts. The damage really hasn't been done yet as we are still at 90 cap. If they start thinking differently about crafting now before we get into 99 cap and 99 gear, lower level gear biased towards synergy synths will be negelectable.

Is the right way to complain to just say synergy sucks and it should be removed? No. The time it would take to remove synergy crafts and convert them to other crafts would be too high. Not only this, but the people that have actually put a lot of time into synergy skill level would just be slapped in the face the same way original high-end original crafters have been. So wanting it completely removed is pretty selfish as well. Wanting it toned down to an equal craft compared to the pre-existing crafts I feel is not selfish.


One big thing I feel so-so about on synergy:

Synergy is "easy". There. I said it. Many FFXI players pride themselves playing a game that is not "easy". Now sometimes I see this "easy" as "player friendly". That is what synergy is. Other than the horrible UI system (which that + the spamming enter grind to level synergy is what turns me off so fast every time I try to level it). Synergy compared to other crafts is "easy".Let me explain myself.

As I've said before, I like the idea of not being able to fail a craft you are way overlevel for. For synergy, even if you fail, you are only out a hundred gil or so tops. Woo-hoo. Other crafts might put you out a few million gil for one broken synth. Synergy has little risk, which makes it more "easy".

High-quality crafting- Making HQs with synergy I guess takes more skill than making HQs than with other crafts. This is only because you actually have to do something different to make a HQ in synergy. However, making HQs is still "easier" in synergy compared to other crafts. Time to get into the big meaty part of why i'm using "easier" and "player friendly" interchangeably here. Crafting, like a lot of things in FFXI, was released as something mysterious. It took a lot of time to figure out what you actually had to do. After awhile you could look online I guess, but at first...... You didn't know about days, facing directions, HQ tiers, etc. This system was very "hard" and very "non player friendly". It was one of the many things that really felt like it belonged in FFXI, because a lot of things aren't explained to you in FFXI, and you have to figure them out yourself. It was slightly painful at times, but many of the people that actually played FFXI for a long time found this type of system rewarding.

Synergy is not like this. The only semi-mysterious things about synergy are the skill caps and how you actually gain skills. Synergy is very player-friendly. It tells you how to HQ. Nearly anything you can do gives you a skill-up. There is little risk in leveling synergy. You can fail on purpose over and over and over to skill up, at a very small cost. Compared to old crafts, this system is much more casual, and was released at the time where the dev team seemed to want to more casual features to FFXI. Other than the annoyingly long time it takes to sit in one spot and spam commands at a furnace, it is a pretty easy craft where you don't have to figure things out much for yourself.

Its not for me. I'm not saying I'm anti-casual either, I just don't like using it.

[Cljader1]

Synergy is "easy". There. I said it. Many FFXI players pride themselves playing a game that is not "easy". Now sometimes I see this "easy" as "player friendly". That is what synergy is. Other than the horrible UI system (which that + the spamming enter grind to level synergy is what turns me off so fast every time I try to level it). Synergy compared to other crafts is "easy".Let me explain myself.

As I've said before, I like the idea of not being able to fail a craft you are way overlevel for. For synergy, even if you fail, you are only out a hundred gil or so tops. Woo-hoo. Other crafts might put you out a few million gil for one broken synth. Synergy has little risk, which makes it more "easy".

High-quality crafting- Making HQs with synergy I guess takes more skill than making HQs than with other crafts. This is only because you actually have to do something different to make a HQ in synergy. However, making HQs is still "easier" in synergy compared to other crafts. Time to get into the big meaty part of why i'm using "easier" and "player friendly" interchangeably here. Crafting, like a lot of things in FFXI, was released as something mysterious. It took a lot of time to figure out what you actually had to do. After awhile you could look online I guess, but at first...... You didn't know about days, facing directions, HQ tiers, etc. This system was very "hard" and very "non player friendly". It was one of the many things that really felt like it belonged in FFXI, because a lot of things aren't explained to you in FFXI, and you have to figure them out yourself. It was slightly painful at times, but many of the people that actually played FFXI for a long time found this type of system rewarding.

Synergy is not like this. The only semi-mysterious things about synergy are the skill caps and how you actually gain skills. Synergy is very player-friendly. It tells you how to HQ. Nearly anything you can do gives you a skill-up. There is little risk in leveling synergy. You can fail on purpose over and over and over to skill up, at a very small cost. Compared to old crafts, this system is much more casual, and was released at the time where the dev team seemed to want to more casual features to FFXI. Other than the annoyingly long time it takes to sit in one spot and spam commands at a furnace, it is a pretty easy craft where you don't have to figure things out much for yourself.

Its not for me. I'm not saying I'm anti-casual either, I just don't like using it.

You make some true points and some untrue points in your post. 1st all that stuff about weather and direction surrounding tradition crafting is a fallacy, the only things the effect old-school crafting is the moon phase with new moon greatly enhancing the chances of breaks, and the IV tiers at 0, 11, 31, 51. 2nd synergy is easy and understandable once to learn the basic mechanics on how to work the furnace. However trying to HQ or complete a difficult synergy is a whole other story. There are special techniques that allow you too raise and lower elemental balances, you need to have knowledge of the complete elemental wheel, understand the various reasons why leaks occurs. Knowledge on how too prevent leaks and more importantly knowledge on how to plug leaks. Each craft have a specific certain way in which it attacks the furnace and build elemental balances to complete a synergy, NO CRAFT synergizes in the same way. Understand what impurity values cause explosions and what pressure values causes one-shot deaths. Learn techinique on how too extend your time on the furnace. There alot of things to consider when you push the furnace to try too make that HQ.

Not too tell my secrets but just to give a general idea on want is needed to be a good synergist, each craft have there own set of hidden abilities acquired through there guild gear. However once you understand those hidden abilities that your craft possess, one should build their synergy skills around those abilities, for example a Goldsmith is the only synergist that has the ability to thwack a furnace 7 times. The furnace is a beast, to understand basic principles are easy but to master, manipulate, and understand the wide variances to precisely control it is very challenging and requires a wide range of knowledge and a steady hand. Furthermore, synergy is not for the casual crafter, but rather its for the hardcore crafter that takes their understanding pass the lvl 100 crafting cap. There is a reason why all the HQs of big ticket synergy items are sold by the same few names on the AH, and its because although its easy to learn the basics and it very difficult to master the craft.

[Daniel_Hatcher]

Synergy is "easy".

As it stands, EVERYTHING in FFXI is Easy, so it fits in well.

[Wenceslao]

I'll just say: I HATE SYNERGY... but our craftskills are worthless now T.T (that's why I stoped crafting, rather not craft than using that bothersome synergy stuff)