1.20+ HQ - Request to keep "Touch Up"

With the proposed HQ changes outlined for 1.20, a finished item synth will both: (a) require all HQ ingredients to HQ, (b) be 100% guaranteed to HQ with all HQ ingredients.

With this change, the current "touch up" mechanism (which applies only to finished item synths) will be rendered obsolete. I find that this mechanic is a more interesting and engaging one then the current material / part syntheses.

I propose that the "touch up" mechanic be applied to making ingredients in patch 1.20.

This would keep the mechanic of balancing out quality gained versus durability remaining, which I personally find more engaging then the "maximize quality" mechanic current in place for materials/parts.

Thank you for your consideration.

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Originally Posted by Amineri

I propose that the "touch up" mechanic be applied to making ingredients in patch 1.20.

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Love it.

+1

As I've understood it, it seems that although HQ making will be 100% (with HQ ingredients), those HQ ingredients will therefore be harder to collect.

That being said, I'd also like to be able to touch up the "normal" ingredients as you suggest it :)

I never understood what the point of Touch Up is. You already sacrifice durability when you try to maximize quality, so how does Touch Up fit into this picture? It completely overlaps with careful synthesis as far as its function goes. It's messy design and Touch Up probably shouldn't be included as long as careful synthesis is in the game.

If someone explained touch up to people, they would use it. I found out how it worked just 2 days ago myself ...

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Originally Posted by Frein

I never understood what the point of Touch Up is. You already sacrifice durability when you try to maximize quality, so how does Touch Up fit into this picture? It completely overlaps with careful synthesis as far as its function goes. It's messy design and Touch Up probably shouldn't be included as long as careful synthesis is in the game.

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From one point of view, the Touch Up mechanic does seem redundant. After all, increasing quality also increases the probability of obtaining an HQ result.

However, the chance to increase HQ from simply increasing Quality is a relatively small increase, as well as a (in my opinion) overly simplified HQ mechanic. I'll give an example, using the mooglebox HQ data:

Quality of 300 yields a 1% chance to +3
Quality of 400 yields a 2% chance to +3
However, each Touch Up gives a new independent chance to +3
Quality of 300 with 3 Touch Ups yields a ~3% chance to +3 (1 - 0.99^3)

This mechanic makes the synthesis process more a balancing act, attempting to achieve high quality without sacrificing too much durability. To my mind, this brings an element of skill (consideration of balancing opposing needs in an uncertain, probabilistic environment) into the synthesis process. With the current material / part HQ process, it is much more repetitive, simply a process of using careful synthesis as much as possible, and repeating the synthesis many times.

Additionally, the Touch Up mechanic for ingredients would add more value to the use of HQ dropped / gathered materials. Whether this is a good thing or not -- I couldn't say.

If the Touch Up mechanic were retained, but used for making ingredients, the current probabilities for +3 result could be retained to achieve HQ result.

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Originally Posted by Amineri

This mechanic makes the synthesis process more a balancing act, attempting to achieve high quality without sacrificing too much durability. To my mind, this brings an element of skill (consideration of balancing opposing needs in an uncertain, probabilistic environment) into the synthesis process. With the current material / part HQ process, it is much more repetitive, simply a process of using careful synthesis as much as possible, and repeating the synthesis many times.

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This is why I prefer the current HQ system. I don't know anyone who can pop out +3s like I do. I mean I've made 3 Crab Bow +3s so far and some people try and try and never get one. It's definitely skill more than luck. The new system will be neither, just a dumbed down system to please the want want want crowd.

There will be more time spent farming and less time spent crafting. I'll have to farm mats for 50 hours for 2 synths vs farming mats for 20 hours for 20 synths and popping out multiple HQs. People don't appreciate this kind of effort so high value items sell slow. They'll sell even slower when people know it's guaranteed HQ. They may not even sell at all when you could just buy the mats and give them to a friend knowing you're guaranteed a result. So this means the only people farming HQ mats will be people who don't craft and the only people buying them people who don't craft.

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Originally Posted by Xenor

This is why I prefer the current HQ system. I don't know anyone who can pop out +3s like I do. I mean I've made 3 Crab Bow +3s so far and some people try and try and never get one. It's definitely skill more than luck. The new system will be neither, just a dumbed down system to please the want want want crowd.

There will be more time spent farming and less time spent crafting. I'll have to farm mats for 50 hours for 2 synths vs farming mats for 20 hours for 20 synths and popping out multiple HQs. People don't appreciate this kind of effort so high value items sell slow. They'll sell even slower when people know it's guaranteed HQ. They may not even sell at all when you could just buy the mats and give them to a friend knowing you're guaranteed a result. So this means the only people farming HQ mats will be people who don't craft and the only people buying them people who don't craft.

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You seem to be presupposing that making HQ ingredients given HQ materials will also be 100% guaranteed. My careful reading of the posts suggests that this mechanic will only be for the finished item synthesis, and I hope that this is true.

You also seem to be supposing that the existing recipes that use a large number of dropped / gathered materials will be remaining. The three recipe examples given so far don't use ANY dropped / gathered materials directly, although they are not the greatest examples, because weaving/armorer recipes traditionally have used very few.

Your example of a crab bow is a fair example. It uses two dropped materials (red coral and green megalocrab shell. Further, the iron spikes are a very low rank synthesis, and generate four +3 results when HQ is achieved. I'd imagine that you don't spend a lot of time trying to get +3 Oak Composite Bows -- the extra time spent trying to make +3 there is not worth the increase in HQ rate on the the final bow.

I would argue that the current synthesis process of making an HQ crab bow already consists of a large amount of time spent farming mats. The crab shell and red coral are straight up farmed items. Iron spikes are 'farmed' by Careful Synth spamming using NQ iron nuggets to get large quantities of +2/+3 iron spikes. Oak Composite bows are then used as +1 primarily.

My hope is that the system going forward, something like the crab bow would be changed so that the crab shell and red coral are no longer directly used. Instead, a manufactured ingredient made from these items would be used, and the synthesis rank to make these should be inline with final result. A r48 bow should require ingredient synths that are r41 to r45. Further, the iron spikes should be changed to something more rank appropriate then a rank 23 synthesis. Perhaps the cobalt ingots that were referenced for the cobalt sabaton recipe (the cobalt ingot synth presumably only generates a single ingot, contrasted with four spikes). Finally, the new HQ system will require an actual HQ Oak Composite Bow to make an HQ Crab Bow. Making the HQ Oak Composite Bow will in turn require all HQ ingredients to make.

It with these assumptions in mind that I proposed keeping the Touch Up mechanic.

• Nearly all ingredients used in a final item synth will be created by crafting
• Creating HQ manufactured ingredients from HQ materials is not 100%
• Ingredients synthesis ranks will be close to the rank of the final item that they are creating
• Ingredient syntheses will produce only 1 or 2 manufactured ingredients (generally 1)

If these are true, I think that retaining the Touch Up mechanic for creating these HQ manufactured ingredients makes a lot of sense.

You bring up some good points there. It really depends on how much they are going to change existing recipes. Making an HQ Crab Bow sounds rather easy if it's left the way it is. The drop rate on +3 coral sucks but unless they do what you said and turn it into a pre-synth or reduce the drop rate even more it will still be too easy to HQ the bow. What I don't want to see is a situation where you spend 99% of the time farming and 1% crafting. For CRP it's already something like 70/30.

Touch up on non-fished items is something I've always thought should be there. But the balance needs to be right or you end up with too many HQ finished items. I mean they could nerf touch up so that more durability is lost in each touch up. So you'd still get some chances at HQ from it but not as many as you'd get on a finished item.

I'm more looking forward to playing with materia than producing HQ items anyway. I think that will be the new way to make money. The risk will shift from making an HQ to producing items with more than 1 materia slot, effectively giving five levels of "HQ".

My main concern right now is the items I currently own that are worth a lot of gil. I don't want to see them reduced to worthless. I've got about 30mil locked up in such items.

I am trying to find the original post of the hq changes planned. Does anyone have that?