Please Implement Auto-Reclaim on Disconnect (90% success, 10% failure)

Please Implement Auto-Reclaim on crafting Disconnection (90% success, 10% failure). That pretty much is the start and end of my proposal. This would be trivial to implement and not abusable (since it would be the same as reclaiming early for no reason).

While this is NOT a perfect solution for crafting disconnection... it would save 90% of the headache when it occurs. It would be a relatively good quality of life improvement for crafters, while being extremely trivial to implement (and not require any bandwidth on the server... just a simple client patch).

Also you would need to require reclaim is equipped... or make reclaim baseline. IMO reclaim should be baseline to all classes anyway. You could also require the user has at least 55 CP to cast reclaim.

Please do this for us SE Devs... we could really use a cookie right now!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Katlyna

This would be trivial to implement and not abusable (since it would be the same as reclaiming early for no reason).

---

Except it would be abusable, as a crafter could just completely ignore Reclaim as a cross-class ability, and then force a disconnect whenever a craft goes bad.

Right you would need to require reclaim is equipped... or make it baseline. IMO it should be baseline to all classes anyway.

They already stated they can't do this because of yes abuse.

It would happen people would force a dc its also too tempting because with expensive mats even if the person says they would never abuse it. They would. Its too easy a tool to abuse.

What are you talking about ... how is forcing a disconnection triggering a 90% success 10% failure abusable?! That's the exact same as casting reclaim and risking loosing your synth at 10%. Its like you're saying reclaim is abusable O_o

Except an automatic Reclaim would occur if you did not have the skill slotted, and would occur whether you had the CP for it or not.

Run out of CP on a craft that goes sour? Disconnect to force a Reclaim would be abusing it.

That's why I claused above only if you have reclaim slotted and 55CP (that's how I would implement it if I were to implement it). But most smart crafters will know if they are going to hit 90% or not before the GS/Byregot's. I suppose if the CP requirement didn't exist.

You all must use reclaim more than me. I haven't reclaimed in three months... I think the risk of reclaiming is terrible... and you guys are making it sound like reclaim is some kind of hack LOL.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Roth_Trailfinder

Except an automatic Reclaim would occur if you did not have the skill slotted, and would occur whether you had the CP for it or not.

Run out of CP on a craft that goes sour? Disconnect to force a Reclaim would be abusing it.

---

I just don't see why they can't save your buffs and progress. I've played MMOs where any buffs/effects you have on when you log out are remembered for when you log back in, so I know it's possible. I don't understand why such a basic QoL feature like this is outside of the bounds with the technology that exists.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

I just don't see why they can't save your buffs and progress. I've played MMOs where any buffs/effects you have on when you log out are remembered for when you log back in, so I know it's possible. I don't understand why such a basic QoL feature like this is outside of the bounds with the technology that exists.

---

Technically speaking one of the biggest goals and points from the 1.0 to 2.0 transition was building better faster clients and servers which were lighter with better capacity. Technically speaking such a feature does require some bandwidth/state. The bigger problem is its a fairly significant investment of development time, debug, testing and polish. Which is why I don't think we'll see such an "advanced" feature ;-/

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Katlyna

Technically speaking one of the biggest goals and points from the 1.0 to 2.0 transition was building better faster clients and servers which were lighter with better capacity. Technically speaking such a feature does require some bandwidth/state. The bigger problem is its a fairly significant investment of development time, debug, testing and polish. Which is why I don't think we'll see such an "advanced" feature ;-/

---

Which is why such constant character save state should only be done during crafting.

You're slowed down during crafting anyway. They SHOULD make it so that the entire synth state is saved when you are crafting, at the end of each step. Don't like how things are going and try to DC? You come back to a still unsavory synth. In the middle of a craft and your Internet goes out? You come back to being at the same spot you disconnected at.

THAT is inherently not abusable. Having that happen only during actual recipe crafting (IE - not during Quick Synthesis or any other time) would not be an undue imposition upon speed for anyone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Katlyna

Technically speaking one of the biggest goals and points from the 1.0 to 2.0 transition was building better faster clients and servers which were lighter with better capacity. Technically speaking such a feature does require some bandwidth/state. The bigger problem is its a fairly significant investment of development time, debug, testing and polish. Which is why I don't think we'll see such an "advanced" feature ;-/

---

That's the thing. I don't get why it'd be "advanced". I won't say I know all the details of coding or infrastructure, but I'd imagine the data needed to be saved for a crafting synth would be a few lines of values. I mean when I get booted off the server I don't log in with my character completely naked, so I think it's safe to say that the game at least remembers what gear you have equipped. Are you really telling me that remembering all this shit ALL the time is some how trivial bandwidth but remembering a few numbers on a craft will explode the servers?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

Are you really telling me that remembering all this shit ALL the time is some how trivial bandwidth but remembering a few numbers on a craft will explode the servers?

---

Not explode them no, but slow them down. Remembering that information for *one* character isn't that big of a deal, but for hundreds at a time? Similar issues crop up over inventory expansions (which was a big issue for FFXI over the past several years). It may not seem like much but all that information has to constantly be updated with the server, and every function they add that does so increases server load. They're already concerned about server load for other things from what I understand, so anything that adds to it is going to have to be a major concern for them to address it, I think.

In a similar thread that was discussing Reclaim and why the server can't just "save the state" of your craft: part of the issue would be volume of data tracked when players only really care about losing a synth due to DC for stuff like:

1. 60 2-star recipes.
2. Maybe primal ex weapons (mog weapons)
3. Some furniture
4. Maybe some 1-star stuff like Thavnarian gear

They could "trigger" the server to save the state of that one craft when you talk to an NPC. It tracks just that one craft. Not every player on the server. I don't think that could be abused.

Either way some kind of system is needed to be added to not lose red scrip and other very pricey crafts. This is the thing that terrifies me the most in game and has made me very hesitant to craft the new stuff. ;-;

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alahra

Not explode them no, but slow them down. Remembering that information for *one* character isn't that big of a deal, but for hundreds at a time? Similar issues crop up over inventory expansions (which was a big issue for FFXI over the past several years). It may not seem like much but all that information has to constantly be updated with the server, and every function they add that does so increases server load. They're already concerned about server load for other things from what I understand, so anything that adds to it is going to have to be a major concern for them to address it, I think.

---

Then add/improve servers? The number of QoL features this game lacks due to server limitations or limitations of PS3 is astounding. This is the only MMO I've played where I can't /whisper people while in an instance. It's the only MMO I've played that can't handle joining a party while crafting or interacting with an NPC. For a game that has server stability issues and frequently 90ks errors people for no apparent reason, I'd think having some type of safety net to ensure people don't get screwed over by said errors would be a priority.

Edit: Speaking of QoL, only forum I've posted on that requires me to cut/paste half of my post because of a 1000 character limit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

The number of QoL features this game lacks due to server limitations or limitations of PS3 is astounding.

---

Neither of those is due to the PS3 unless I've been misinformed. The whispering in dungeons as far as I know was a deliberate design decision. I don't think the party joining is directly related to the PS3 either, I suspect it's just written that way for some bizarre reason (though I could be wrong about that).

I do agree they should do something about it, but they probably aren't likely to pursue the avenue of more server checks, as that would likely further contribute to the destabilization issues we already have.

Yeah I suspect the only solution we'll get is a relatively simple client solution... hence my proposal. I know what I'm proposing isn't ideal. But they aren't going to deliver ideal. But we might get a simple client solution like an auto reclaim (if reclaim could have been cast by the user). I think that seems reasonable and at least gives us something rather than nothing.

DEV Make it so!!!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alahra

snip

---

I was listing PS3 because whenever anything gets brought up about something not being implemented that's usually the excuse.

That aside, I still do not see why saving Quality/Progress made on a synth along with the current crafting related buffs you have active is any more cumbersome to the servers than all the saving it does for your character every time you change equipment, meld, dye swap, glamour, change zones, trade, purchase/sell items from npc vendors, kill a mob, I could go on and on.

You could make the argument you are trying to make as to why this would overload the servers about literally thousands of other shit in the game already that causes the game to remember what state your character was in. I really think people are just making up excuses for the developers for some inexplicable reason. Have the developers ever actually said this is the reason why they can't do this? If so please link an example of a developer posting about this issue.

It sounds really asinine that the servers can't handle logging less than a dozen numerical values for the status of a craft for every player on the server (an unlikely scenario give most people don't craft let alone simultaneously) when the same server clearly has to already log far more crap for the entire server population on a continual basis.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

Have the developers ever actually said this is the reason why they can't do this? If so please link an example of a developer posting about this issue.

---

Not about this specific issue, no, but they've mentioned it for others (namely inventory space, sometime within the last few live letters, as I recall--though it might have been an interview with Yoshi). If the concern applies to one concern about server communication, it would apply to others, though not perhaps to the same degree. I'm not making excuses for them so much as trying to suggest why they may not have done this already.

There are also likely technical limitations, as the game seems to reset buffs as a general rule whenever a character is disconnected from the server. Fixing that so that crafts could continue across a disconnect would mean rewriting something that's likely foundational in the code, and rewriting code is always tricky (if you ever played WoW, you might recall Paladins randomly having the ability to summon a black Kodo mount if they specc'd 3/5 in a certain talent that had nothing to do with mounts because of some other, completely unrelated, change).

Games like this are incredibly complicated batches of code and sometimes what seems like a simple solution from one perspective ends up being anything but simple in the long run. (As another example, FFXI essentially cannot go above level 99 because of fundamentals in the code that were set some 15 years ago limiting the value of character level to two digits--increasing the level cap would require a massive undertaking as a result.)

A more likely example solution is some sort of NPC that will hold/duplicate a set of mats for us for a fee for say 30 minutes. Make it have a gil cost or some other limit so it's used mainly for big synths. The NPC could hold the mats in reserve, perhaps establishing some sort of check (not unlike a quest) to see if we've actually made the item we set out to make. If the item is made, the NPC's back up items disappear. If not, up until that 30 minutes is up, we can reclaim the items if they're lost because of a disconnect. The check would also have to watch for failure, too, of course, to prevent abuse.

there is only one solution and it probably can't even be implemented.

when you disconnect in the middle of a craft when you login you are back on the craft with the same progress and cp basically carry on where you left off.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Yurihyuga

there is only one solution and it probably can't even be implemented.

when you disconnect in the middle of a craft when you login you are back on the craft with the same progress and cp basically carry on where you left off.

---

That's the only "perfect" solution. But its unlikely we'll ever get this. So we have to encourage development to give us a simpler solution to improve what is a severely bad QoL issue for crafters (as if we don't have enough problems).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Alahra

snip

---

I understand coding is always tricky and requires a lot of debugging, but continuing to build on a flawed foundation only makes it harder to change later down the line. For example, the fact that dots tick down based on the internal clock of the server and not when the dot was applied (hence why all dots tick at the same time regardless of when they were applied). It's nice that Skill/Spell Speed finally give a damage boost to these, but notice that it's due to increased damage per tick and not due to getting more ticks. You can imagine getting more ticks in per application could have some very interesting interactions with classes that go off of procs, but we don't get to see interesting stat itemization because they'd rather throw a band aid on than fix the underlying problem. I'd think an expansion would be a good time to look at fixing these types of design flaws.

An expansion is no better a time to overhaul an existing system than at any other time. An expansion is just that - it's an addition to an existing architecture. There's nothing special about an expansion that makes it easier to root out deep-seated flaws, and given time and money budgets this means that it's more likely that these flaws will be worked around rather than fixed.

That said, the current situation is pretty darned frustrating, I agree, and it's something they ought to spend some time and money on. Even if they don't give us the "save state after every step" solution (which would be ideal, but if there's some kind of bandwidth thing similar to the inventory issues that prevents this solution, I guess we'll have to deal with the disappointmen), it'd be nice if, at the very least, they treated a disconnect as a "failed synth", and give us a chance to recover materials. For that matter, it'd be nice if choosing the "end synthesis" option ALSO gave us a chance to recover materials; it's irritating having to spam Hasty Touch until the synth breaks when I want to Reclaim and try again.

And speaking of Reclaim...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Katlyna

You all must use reclaim more than me. I haven't reclaimed in three months... I think the risk of reclaiming is terrible... and you guys are making it sound like reclaim is some kind of hack LOL.

---

It depends on what you're making, and on the value of your materials. There are crafted items for which crafting a NQ product is worthless, or at the very least worth far less than the cost of the materials used to create it. In such cases, you can consider creating an NQ product to be THE SAME as losing all of your materials. In such a situation, consider this case: due to repeated Hasty Touch failures, you now realize that you'll get, at best, a 20% chance of HQ. This means that if you complete the synth, you have a 20% chance of HQ, or an 80% chance of losing all of your materials (in the form of a worthless NQ product). On the other hand, if you use Reclaim, you have only a 10% chance of losing all of your materials.

This is the mentality behind using Reclaim. If you're a gambler at heart, you may prefer the 20% chance of HQ - but there's a reason why gamblers are usually not wealthy people. :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

This is the mentality behind using Reclaim. If you're a gambler at heart, you may prefer the 20% chance of HQ - but there's a reason why gamblers are usually not wealthy people. :p

---

That pretty much summarizes why I hate but will sometimes use reclaim. Functionally and statistically I fully understand why reclaim has use and I'll use reclaim when absolutely necessary. But I rarely gamble anything... I fight tooth and nail to not gamble haha ;-)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

This is the mentality behind using Reclaim. If you're a gambler at heart, you may prefer the 20% chance of HQ - but there's a reason why gamblers are usually not wealthy people. :p

---

I don't really like gambling, so having the entire crafting system designed so heavily around it is beginning to get old. I wouldn't expect raid mechanics like this to fly, so I really don't see why crafting gets a pass. At the end of the day whether or not you fail or succeed to HQ a craft is in the hands of the game telling you so, and many times crafts are failed through no fault of the crafter. It's really lazy, and at the end of the day if this is what crafting is going to be like I just assume have WoW crafting. At least then I can make raid food/potions for my static in 5 mins rather than being forced to individually craft consumables that you can literally guzzle down by the dozens in a 3 hour session.

Crafting this tier actually feels like a huge step backward from 4*, both in terms of usefulness of recipes and in terms of pushing the RNG to the ingot/lumbers and allowing the final products to be safely HQ'd so long that a few of the 4* materials were HQ.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

It's really lazy, and at the end of the day if this is what crafting is going to be like I just assume have WoW crafting.

---

Admittedly, I don't have a lot of MMO experience outside of FFXIV. The only other MMO I've played is FFXI, and the crafting in that was PURE RNG, with very little a player could do to affect the odds. You clicked Synthesis, loaded the ingredients, and then hit the "OK" button. No matter how high your level, you had a chance to fail (something around 5%, I think), which could cause you to lose none, some, or all of your ingredients (chosen randomly). If you were above the level of the craft, you had a chance to HQ, with the best odds being if you were 51 levels above the craft, netting you roughly 50/50 odds of HQ. Of course, it's not possible to be 51 levels above the highest crafts, so you were stuck with the basic HQ chance, around 1%. You didn't see a lot of HQ endgame gear, and the pieces that folks managed to produce (purely by chance, no skill involved whatsoever) were some of the most expensive items in the game.

Compared against that, the crafting system in FFXIV is amazingly fun. You have real control over how things turn out. Admittedly, it's a system that favors mathematicians; leveraging probabilities to produce the best results over the long term is what crafting is all about. Some folks, though, just can't seem to wrap their head around the idea that just because a CAN go catastrophically wrong doesn't mean that it WILL. Murphy's Law is a big, fat lie. And, even if that odd failure crops up, you have plenty of successes to balance it out.

What was WoW crafting like? Just drop in the ingredients, and out comes a finished product? No HQ chance or failure risk?

Edit: Also, you mentioned this would never fly in Raid mechanics... except that they DO. Critical hits. Unless there's some limitation on how critical hits work in raids that I'm unaware of, every hit has a chance to crit and do extra damage. A crit or two here and there isn't likely to cause problems - but what if every hit is a crit? Not likely, of course, but it could theoretically happen. Hasty Touch is much the same way; a couple of Hasty Failures and you'll still be fine, but if all or most of them fail, you're screwed. It's the same deal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

I understand coding is always tricky and requires a lot of debugging, but continuing to build on a flawed foundation only makes it harder to change later down the line.

---

I certainly agree--however, the problem is that this entire game is built on a flawed foundation. It's kind of too late, and they have to avoid mucking with things as much as they can because the whole architecture sitting on top of the code from 1.0. The fact that they rescued the game at all is nothing short of a miracle, but to do so, they had to cut a *lot* of corners. Even the game's netcode is still from 1.0 (which probably has a lot to do with all the disconnect issues in the first place). Sadly, they're just not in a position where they can really do major restructurings at this time.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

What was WoW crafting like? Just drop in the ingredients, and out comes a finished product? No HQ chance or failure risk?

---

This is exactly how WoW crafting worked, yes. There was no failure chance. Either your skill was high enough to create an item or it wasn't. If it was, you clicked a button in your recipe list, the materials were subtracted from your inventory, and you got the new thing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Compared against that, the crafting system in FFXIV is amazingly fun. You have real control over how things turn out. Admittedly, it's a system that favors mathematicians; leveraging probabilities to produce the best results over the long term is what crafting is all about. Some folks, though, just can't seem to wrap their head around the idea that just because a CAN go catastrophically wrong doesn't mean that it WILL. Murphy's Law is a big, fat lie. And, even if that odd failure crops up, you have plenty of successes to balance it out.

---

.....and you just gave away the secret to crafting successfully. Aside from planning out a rotation that gives you the best expected results, the better you are at manipulating the odds during a craft, the better your HQ yields will be. The key is to actively assess the situation on a constant basis and look for opportunities to improve your probabilities of success.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Compared against that, the crafting system in FFXIV is amazingly fun. You have real control over how things turn out. Admittedly, it's a system that favors mathematicians; leveraging probabilities to produce the best results over the long term is what crafting is all about. Some folks, though, just can't seem to wrap their head around the idea that just because a CAN go catastrophically wrong doesn't mean that it WILL. Murphy's Law is a big, fat lie. And, even if that odd failure crops up, you have plenty of successes to balance it out.

---

I've had 20% Materia melds fail 30+ times before a success (yes it's happened on more than one occasion). I've failed 5 Hasty Touches with Steady Hand II in a row. I've also pentamelded using 6 materia total and gone an entire synth without failing a single Hasty/Rapid Synth. Troll the forums and you will find plenty of threads of similar stories, so if you've never experienced shit like this then more power to you for having the easiest time in the world crafting in FFXIV. Your last statement is fine if all you are doing is mass producing Wootz Ingots, but with 2* crafting you are kind of SoL if you get stellar RNG on the Ingots and Lumber but fail half of your Hasty Touches on the 2* Off hand you are trying to craft. This is where it falls short of 4* crafting. Unless you are using HQ aethersands (pure RNG time sink), you need about 9-10 IQ stacks to get 90+% meaning in a rotation where you can make 11 touch attempts you have minimal room for error. Compare this to 4* where full HQ starting mats on a final product would mean 6-7 IQ stacks would yield a 100%, but the trade off was that the ingots/lumber needed to be HQ'd from 0 initial quality. Your reward for mass producing base materials was a greater margin for error in the final product.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

What was WoW crafting like? Just drop in the ingredients, and out comes a finished product? No HQ chance or failure risk?

---

Yes, and to clarify this is mostly aimed at things like food/potions that you need lots of and need to be HQ. NQ Draconic potions are on par with HQ X-Potions (which come in stacks of 3). In WoW/Rift there is no HQing, so you can basically craft the food and potions for an entire raid with quick synth, something that would take hours of tedious crafting to do in FFXIV.

Making potions and food in a game shouldn't feel like a chore.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Edit: Also, you mentioned this would never fly in Raid mechanics... except that they DO. Critical hits. Unless there's some limitation on how critical hits work in raids that I'm unaware of, every hit has a chance to crit and do extra damage. A crit or two here and there isn't likely to cause problems - but what if every hit is a crit? Not likely, of course, but it could theoretically happen. Hasty Touch is much the same way; a couple of Hasty Failures and you'll still be fine, but if all or most of them fail, you're screwed. It's the same deal.

---

To my knowledge only auto attacks can crit. The difference is as a tank/healer I can look at why I died and think of things I could've done to prevent that: 1) healer could've kept me topped off, 2) I could put on more fending accessories, 3) I could time my CDs better during heavy AoE phases etc. When I fail a synthesis because I failed an 80% chance 5 times in a row what constructive thought process can the player go through? At best: 1) get more CP to get an extra touch attempts to "lessen" the effect of RNG, 2) Rethink your rotation. CP will only take you so far as it has a hard cap and unless a rotation exists that eliminates Hasty Touch completely this really isn't changing much.

One last thing, RNG isn't bad by itself. The Good/Excellent conditions I think are fine RNG because it's something the player actively reacts to and I'd love to see more crafting mechanics where "something" happens and I need to choose how best to react to it. Success Rates are lazy RNG design and it's the equivalent of trying to DPS in a raid where you don't meet the accuracy cap. If Craftsmanship/Control raised success rate for associated skills I might actually treat these as useful stats instead of accuracy caps to reach and forget about.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

Your last statement is fine if all you are doing is mass producing Wootz Ingots, but with 2* crafting you are kind of SoL if you get stellar RNG on the Ingots and Lumber but fail half of your Hasty Touches on the 2* Off hand you are trying to craft. This is where it falls short of 4* crafting. Unless you are using HQ aethersands (pure RNG time sink), you need about 9-10 IQ stacks to get 90+% meaning in a rotation where you can make 11 touch attempts you have minimal room for error. Compare this to 4* where full HQ starting mats on a final product would mean 6-7 IQ stacks would yield a 100%, but the trade off was that the ingots/lumber needed to be HQ'd from 0 initial quality.

---

I feel that the odds are heavily balanced in your favor for level 60 1* and 2* crafts, even more so than the 3* and 4* crafts from before. Having enough CP is key, however.

So far, I've crafted around 50 2* materials starting from 1500-1900 quality. For the first 30 materials, my stats were around 721 craftsmanship, 695 control, and 440 CP (w/food). Out of the 30 materials here, I ended up with 2 NQs, with one of them being at 68% and the other at around 30% due to 5 misses during the synth.

My current stats (other than my upgraded weaver) are around 721 craftsmanship, 728 control w/food, and 455 CP w/food. I've gotten a 100% HQ yield during my most recent 20 (2* material) crafts and have noticed a sharp decline in the number of my crafts that turn out to be 80-90% due to changes I've made using the extra 15 CP. It is possible to get 5 misses like my 30% synth from before, but they're not very common. It's true that NQs are bound to happen, but your HQs should heavily outnumber them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sibyll

I've had 20% Materia melds fail 30+ times before a success (yes it's happened on more than one occasion). I've failed 5 Hasty Touches with Steady Hand II in a row. I've also pentamelded using 6 materia total and gone an entire synth without failing a single Hasty/Rapid Synth. Troll the forums and you will find plenty of threads of similar stories, so if you've never experienced shit like this then more power to you for having the easiest time in the world crafting in FFXIV. Your last statement is fine if all you are doing is mass producing Wootz Ingots, but with 2* crafting you are kind of SoL if you get stellar RNG on the Ingots and Lumber but fail half of your Hasty Touches on the 2* Off hand you are trying to craft. This is where it falls short of 4* crafting. Unless you are using HQ aethersands (pure RNG time sink), you need about 9-10 IQ stacks to get 90+% meaning in a rotation where you can make 11 touch attempts you have minimal room for error. Compare this to 4* where full HQ starting mats on a final product would mean 6-7 IQ stacks would yield a 100%, but the trade off was that the ingots/lumber needed to be HQ'd from 0 initial quality. Your reward for mass producing base materials was a greater margin for error in the final product.

---

Oh, by no means am I so blessed that I've never had my share of disasters. But the problem with "trolling the forums and finding plenty of threads" is that you are looking at a FAR from unbiased sampling. If a craft goes great, do you come to the forums and talk about it? Not usually, unless you beat some crazy odds or something. But when a craft goes disastrously wrong? THAT'S when players come here to rant. It's not limited to crafting, either; if you'd never played the game and only based your knowledge of it on the General Discussion forums, you'd be convinced that the playerbase is a cesspool of hatred and ignorance, when actually folks in-game are pretty darned civil.

As for those blisteringly painful 2* crafts where your Hasties are failing left and right - that's why they gave us Reclaim, so that even if the worst happens, you still have a shot (a very good shot, in fact!) at salvaging everything for another attempt. You basically need to fail two rolls of the dice one easy (reclaim), the other of variable difficulty but typically also easy if you know what you're doing (an unsalvageable amount of bad RNG during the craft) before you're totally screwed. When that happens, you throw up your hands, accept your loss, and take solace in the fact that it's a kind of loss that's going to be very, very rare.

If it's a kind of loss that's NOT very, very rare, if you are REGULARLY being forced to use Reclaim on high-priced synths of this kind, it's time to reexamine your methods, your gear, and whether you might need to use more HQ ingredients.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

...

---

Having done some of the 2* crafts myself, even if you use all HQ ingredients on something like the body pieces or main/offhands, it's diluted by the things you can't HQ (the materia) I could get as close to 3k starting quaility (though 2k is more than enough), it doesn't change the fact that in order to get that 100% HQ rate, you'd need at least 10 stacks, out of the 13 or so HTs you can get in and in the end, you still rely on that 80% to succeed (or 90% even if you're doing the MaMa method, and I've had my fair share of having more than 4 flawless synthesis fail, which means I need to use an extra CSII to finish). No matter how you slice it, your chances of success hinges on your hasty touches working (or getting good conditions so you can get CP to use precise touch, to reduce the need for hasty touch). No amount of assessment improves the chance of success, it only minimizes the chance of losing your materials (knowing when to bail out and reclaim). Just because they have to frequently use reclaim does not nessescarly mean they are doing something wrong in their rotation; there's a cookie-cutter one that works quite well, but it still has its fair share of misses because it relies on 90% flawless synthesis and 80% hasty touches to work (and unfortunately, this is probably the safest option too)

No matter the method you try to apply, you always have a static portion (which may or may not have RNG attached to it), that is, how you finish the craft through CSII. The other half is increasing the quaility, and we're not just slamming our buttons on HT blindly, we're already taking every counter measure to giveit the best sucess rate, gaining CP where we can afford it (TotT when we can afford to lose a stack of SH) if it happens, and using precise touch in place of HT. But half of that isn't even making adjustments on the go; most 2* crafts incorporate waste not II and they all use 7 out of 8 attempts on it to make the full use of out of it, so you can't afford to use TotT on the good anyway..

In the raid example, the crits only occur on auto attacks, which is the least of your worries as far as outgoing damage is concerned. Comparing it to the success rate of hasty touch is a far shot because the two are not equally important in their respective areas.

In context of the topic, it'd be so much better to just allow you to resume the craft from where it left off upon logging in. Its utterly infuriating lose materials for a 2 star craft because of a random disconnect on SE's end, and this was before the favor change so it effectively took 90 minutes of gathering to make that item.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

But half of that isn't even making adjustments on the go; most 2* crafts incorporate waste not II and they all use 7 out of 8 attempts on it to make the full use of out of it, so you can't afford to use TotT on the good anyway..

---

It depends on how you've designed your crafting strategy. I use Waste Not II pretty often, but only when I feel it is the best option at the "critical point" in my synth. My crafting strategy is designed with maximum flexibility in mind, and I don't believe that my HQ yields would be anywhere near as high if I was stuck to a predetermined pathway.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

snip

---

If your rotation has an 80% chance of building up to a decent HQ level and you use Reclaim the rest of the time, I don't consider that to be using Reclaim "regularly". That's a good rotation. What I meant by "regularly" is a crafter who can barely manage 40% HQ, and so reclaims again and again until they manage a perfect storm of touches that manages to nudge them 70% or higher - THIS is when a player needs to reexamine themselves.

80% success rate, with a 90% shot to regain ingredients the other 20% of the time? You have nothing to complain about there, imo. There's still a chance for failure, true, but I still maintain that a system with a 100% chance of success is a pretty boring one, even if it results in the occasional disastrous loss. There's not a lot of thrill in victory if there's no consequences for defeat.

As for the crits only on auto-attacks thing, yeah, that was something I was unaware of, and which I find pretty stupid. I could see disabling crits on things like tank buster attacks, but it's dumb to take them from everything else, as well. And it makes Awareness even more worthless than I already thought it was. :p

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

80% success rate, with a 90% shot to regain ingredients the other 20% of the time? You have nothing to complain about there, imo. There's still a chance for failure, true, but I still maintain that a system with a 100% chance of success is a pretty boring one, even if it results in the occasional disastrous loss. There's not a lot of thrill in victory if there's no consequences for defeat.

---

I concur with your general comment there, noting that if you are a "smarter" crafter with more experience you should be able to achieve a higher success rate, which is currently true. I find it interesting this discussion has gone from a simple talk about what should happen on disconnection to NQ vs HQ rates and the use of reclaim period. Its made me lol :o

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MN_14

It depends on how you've designed your crafting strategy. I use Waste Not II pretty often, but only when I feel it is the best option at the "critical point" in my synth. My crafting strategy is designed with maximum flexibility in mind, and I don't believe that my HQ yields would be anywhere near as high if I was stuck to a predetermined pathway.

---

The thing is, you'r more-or-less predetermined when using something like WNII. You want to use at least 7 out of the 8 hits, otherwise every step you aren't using it is wasted (thus most people have it pre-determined with 5 HT+SHII and 2 CSII to use up those 7 steps). And everything after that becomes a flowchart at that point; Good but no SH? TotT. TotT at least once before this point? Use Precise Touch. etc etc. There's far too few meaningful variables for "making smart decisions" to be the case imo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

...

---

It's all confirmation bias and depending on the perspective you want to go for. Some people believe RNG has no place in crafting as long as you know how to access the situation and change your approach as such (which is the difference between succeeding the craft and minimizing the losses from a craft). Especially when you're handling high-profile crafts which well...previously required an average of 90 minutes just to gather for (and multiply that by how many of those mats you actually need, like 4 of them for a mainhand).


That being said though, along with confirmation bias, there is the off chance where you can get a whole string of failed touches touches throughout the craft, and the good conditions themselves are already incredibly scarce (where 5 out of 7 crafts I had no good conditions the entire time). 80% is still 80%, and you don't need a whole lot of that 20% for the craft to go south to a >90% HQ rate. I've personally had my own crafting spree where out of my 7 crafts, at least 3 of them had gone south because I either failed more than 3 hasty touches, 3 flawless synthesis, or both (which also has happened). And unlikely as it is, it's still pretty damn shitty because me as a crafter, the only way I can access that situation is "Hope I get an excellent and not mess up that/Hope I get goods when WNII isn't active" if we were talking about succeeding the craft....and that feels like more praying to RNG than working with what I get honestly.

Sure it "evens" out if you get a larger sample size, but unlike previously, you cant mass produce material items like this because of the red scrips (thus lowering your sample size to a very very small amount compared to say, wootz ingots or kirimu leather)

On a side note, awareness has too long of a cooldown to be usable for all tank busters. If we were to take the current tank busters (which hit for well around 25k unmitigated) and let those be critable, we're looking at 32k damage, you'd need over 50% mitigation (and they're multiplicative last I checked, stacking cool downs that is) to survive it, and that's barely by the hair of your chinny chin chin since most full-vit tanks currently are barely breaking 19k. Outside of tank busters, you have cleaves that hit for around 7-9k, but those are usually mixed in with raid wide AoE that also hit for around 9k to the entire party. The outgoing damage in a fight is a very delicate thing and you don't want there to be an instance where it becomes a instant loss-condition because something crit and the damage is more than you can heal without requiring cooldowns (nor is it something you can predict and you obviously can't be pre-emptive on every possible-crit instance), and said cooldowns are already needed for certain parts of the fight because the damage is excessive as it is when it comes to raid damage.


If they wanted awareness to play an active role in mitigating tank busters, then the tank busters themselves need to be a guaranteed crit and the numbers tuned appropriately. There's only a few applications with Awareness, only two instances I can name off the top of my head where you're dealing with close to 100% crit rate (electric node in T11 and Shiva /w Bow), and preventing crits from RI as a warrior.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

On a side note, awareness has too long of a cooldown to be usable for all tank busters. If we were to take the current tank busters (which hit for well around 25k unmitigated) and let those be critable, we're looking at 32k damage, you'd need over 50% mitigation (and they're multiplicative last I checked, stacking cool downs that is) to survive it, and that's barely by the hair of your chinny chin chin since most full-vit tanks currently are barely breaking 19k.

---

Well, yes, that's why I specifically said "I could see disabling crits on things like tank buster attacks". When an attack is specifically designed to almost-kill a tank on a non-crit, allowing crits there is just unfair. I still maintain, though, that crits should be allowed on cleaves, raid-wide attacks, and so on, with the caveat that such attacks have their normal damage lowered a bit so that the total average damage over time is maintained. It's okay to give your healers heart attacks from time to time due to unexpected crits, and it gives your DPS even more incentive to stay outside of telegraphs and cleaves!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

...

---

Raid wide attacks would actually be lethal to non-tanks if they'd crit. And they're unavoidable no less. Telegraphed AoEs are already lethal as it is, getting hit by one is a garunteed death regardless of the circumstance.

If you try to balance it around that, it kinda makes for a boring aspect to healing (because at this point they can't really risk going into cleric stance), not to mention the two ends of it; If you get no crits, the outgoing damage is a joke. If it's going to crit repeatedly, it'd either be the same degree as it is now, or unmanageable because there's no diminishing returns to the crit itself.

This sort of thing makes for very little room to work with too. Taking gunnery pod for example, it's two instances of 4.5-5k damage, totalling around 10k. If we keep it the way it is and allow either one to crit, it's lethal to non-tanks (they both occur at the same time). If we wanted to keep the crit aspect, their overall damage would have to be lower, and the instance of non-crits would be lower than what we have now. There's no need to immediately top the dps right after gunnery pod, making this crit or not would have no influence on what the healers are doing and is just slapping on RNG for the sake of it. Same with other raid AoEs like sluce or cascade.

If there were to be any meaningful reason behind the change, the crit'd variation would have to do more than it currently is, how much stronger than it currently is is debatable; significantly more makes it lethal, lowering the base damage will make it less of a meaningful mechanic as far as healing checks is concerned and there's no balance or leeway for fight designs if you take this into consideration. Almost no MMO bosses use crits in their numbers for a reason, it's too much of a wild variable to account for when you're designing fight mechanics.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

And everything after that becomes a flowchart at that point; Good but no SH? TotT. TotT at least once before this point? Use Precise Touch. etc etc. There's far too few meaningful variables for "making smart decisions" to be the case imo.

---

I concur you have a very good point here. That a group of smart people can basically chop up a craft at a given star/difficulty level figure out a few "best" options A), B), and C) and then as you said flowchart the exact optimal option when a given situation occurs.

Personally I think this problem stems from two issues:
A) Item progress must be completed at the end.
B) Byregot's is superior at the end and often grants ~20-40% of an items quality.

If these two limitations were changed/removed then things would change notable. For instance if you could complete 100% of your progress at any time and instead your synthesis ends when durability reaches 0 (or less) then progress could be done dynamically. Rather than trying to hit an exact mark you could try more dangerous options without concern of overshooting.

Similar to the progress problem. Having Byregot's complete half your quality is terrible. If combat relied on similar mechanics where DPS had to get X stacks and then assassinate bosses at 50% life... we would get some really bizarre binary strategies for DPS. Quality should be something you chip away at any way you can dynamically throughout the rotation. Small rotations should be useful but a single rotation should not span the entire synth. Specialist rotations hinted at the possibility of this type of synthing, but failed because Byregot's is simply superior.

Anyway if they were to combine both of these ideologies into the current system, we would suddenly end up with truly dynamic crafting since you don't have to hit an exact mark, rather you are rewarded for making smart dynamic choices to push progress and quality as quick and efficiently as you can given your current state.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

And everything after that becomes a flowchart at that point; Good but no SH? TotT. TotT at least once before this point? Use Precise Touch. etc etc. There's far too few meaningful variables for "making smart decisions" to be the case imo.

---

I pretty much agree with everything you've said in your last few posts. It's what I was trying to get at, but couldn't be bothered to keep explaining it anymore to these two.

I think there are more interesting ways to design crafting than around slot machine success rates and big HP bars. Raiders would get pretty sick of every boss getting more HP and hitting harder with everything else remaining the same, so I don't really see why crafting should be any different.