Can we please have something to help us meld.

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Originally Posted by Jamillion

24%? 19%? Those don't sound like the numbers of someone who seriously overmelds. Try 6% on a grade 4 materia. On multiple items. It's not okay. It's a pointless gil sink and to be competitive you HAVE to do it. The overmeld system is a punishment in its current state, a chance to improve the odds of success would be nice.

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Just a funny anecdote.. I did my belt & right side recently and the 6% melds (craftsman IV on the last slot) gave me way less trouble than the 10-11% melds (4th slot). I spent on average 18-20 cunning IV for 4th slot melds (the worst was 37). Whereas the 5th slots took me 5-10 usually. Coincidence? Most likely. But this has been my experience throughout the patches.

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Originally Posted by Porkchop

Just a funny anecdote.. I did my belt & right side recently and the 6% melds (craftsman IV on the last slot) gave me way less trouble than the 10-11% melds (4th slot). I spent on average 18-20 cunning IV for 4th slot melds (the worst was 37). Whereas the 5th slots took me 5-10 usually. Coincidence? Most likely. But this has been my experience throughout the patches.

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I'm convinced that SE just can't math lol

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Originally Posted by Jamillion

24%? 19%? Those don't sound like the numbers of someone who seriously overmelds. Try 6% on a grade 4 materia.

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You're missing the point. To have a step with a 6% chance to succeed fail 13 times in a row is expected. But a 24% chance? Not so much.

And I don't see a need to pentameld Grade 4 materia in HW. Not yet anyway. It may be more cost-effective to just accept a higher risk of failing to HQ your 2-star crafts (and then buy mats to try again when you do, if needed) than to pentameld grade 4 materia into your gear. YMMV.

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Originally Posted by Dante_V

I think a very simple solution to this would be to increase the margin like 3% for the next grade materia across the board. So for example if Grade 1 has a 6% chance on the last meld then grade 2 would have a 9% chance, 3 would have 12%, 4 would have 15% chance on last meld.

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This is exactly the opposite of the current system. Higher grade materia has a lower chance to succeed, all else being equal. You should not expect that to change.

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Originally Posted by Jamillion

I'm convinced that SE just can't math lol

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I'm convinced that people without any formal training in statistics don't understand random processes.
That's one of the most important conclusions I came to while studying statistics in my university days.

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Originally Posted by Silverbane

I'm convinced that people without any formal training in statistics don't understand random processes.
That's one of the most important conclusions I came to while studying statistics in my university days.

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Well, that's a fine conjecture when working with true random chance. But when working with computing all "random" events are created from seed strings. Considering the massive amount of discrepancies that are regularly referenced I would not be surprised at all to hear that the seed strings SE uses are not as diverse as they could be leading to some of the things we've seen in game. Also, the average wait times are a prime example of SE not being able to math. Of course that's a completely lighthearted and joking comment.

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Originally Posted by doctapeppa

But it isn't a luxury, it's absolutely required. Especially so for DoH gear. A food or potion that boosts meld chance by ~5% is not going to break the materia market.

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Why is it required? As I pointed out in the rest of my post, you can always ask someone to craft the item for you. In fact, all you really need is to ask someone to make you the offhand and you can prob just craft the rest with minimal stats (all you really need is cp4 on every piece of gear)

It will prob only get worse with the introduction of grade V materia.

imo that is how a proper market should work. Those who have invested in their melds should be able to charge a premium for their investment. This is the same as leveling up crafting: getting a craft from 1-60 cost millions. Those who have invested those millions should be able to charge the premium in items on the marketboard.

Also, with crafter gear, SE already provided a fail-free alternative in the form of ilvl 180 gear. Zero melds/favor mats needed.

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Originally Posted by Jamillion

Well, that's a fine conjecture when working with true random chance. But when working with computing all "random" events are created from seed strings.

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Not entirely true. Crypto-grade pseudo-random number generators accumulate entropy from various sources, such as one or more of thermal noise, mouse movements, various OS counters, network packet inter-arrival times, and the like, and use that entropy to generate their output after various processing steps. Getting enough entropy for high speed, high quality, cryptographic key generation was a challenge the security architecture R&D group I was part of a few years ago had to struggle with.

There are plenty of PRNGs that don't just seed a linear feedback shift register and let it run. And there are plenty of PRNGs that are indistinguishable from a true RNG. Some are even provided with Windows.

Every online game I've ever played, people complain that the random numbers generated aren't truly random. But no one actually collects data and does analysis to prove it. It's mainly people who have never studied statistics just remembering that time they missed four 99% attempts in a row, for example, which says nothing about the quality of the PRNG.

Also note that we tend to only remember the extremes: such as all those double hasty fails, 40x failed melds, or getting a 11% meld in 2 melds, while forgetting about all the other "average occurrences".

Unfortunately we are probably a little too late to receive any big changes on established economies without really screwing people over (from people who have spent millions to buy/craft 2 star crafting items that are not needed atm, to those who have already pentamelded their full sets). a rebalancing of the economy is probably better off being done in 4.x or at least in 3.3 with a clear warning ahead of time so the materia market wouldn't just crash.

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Originally Posted by Ragnvard

Unfortunately we are probably a little too late to receive any big changes on established economies without really screwing people over (from people who have spent millions to buy/craft 2 star crafting items that are not needed atm, to those who have already pentamelded their full sets). a rebalancing of the economy is probably better off being done in 4.x or at least in 3.3 with a clear warning ahead of time so the materia market wouldn't just crash.

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Perhaps. But note that the revitalization of the real estate market that will happen when SE starts making abandoned plots available will create new demand for crafted items, from people accustomed to spending big on vanity items (like a house :)). That potential economic boom might be an opportunity to tune the crafting economy things a little without any crafters getting overly angry about it.