Anyone else miss synthesis?

I started ffxi as a hume in bastok. I happened to run past the goldsmith guild at level 5 or something and saw a taru making copper ingots. I saw the little arms waving back and forth, and i was like oooooooooooooo. I deleted my character and made a taru, and never looked back. I fished and cooked in ffxi and loved them both. However I love synthesis, but do not love whatever it is we have now. I want to see the adorable actions of my lala waving his arms around a crystal in the air to create river sand. Whatever it is we do now, I want it gone and I want my old synths back. Is that to much to ask?

Also while you're at it, fix fixing to be like it was too. I liked fighting hte fish, not this turn based crap.

Nope. Don't miss that at all. Don't like the new stuff either.

While some of the current animations are nice, they really do lack that magical feel don't they? Let me ask you this:

If I've got a wooden table and a metal tool, and I'm physically cutting out the leather and stitching it together, or I'm physically lighting a fire in my alembic and distilling stuff, where does the crystal part even come into the situation? Am I just sitting on it and draining the energy by osmosis to fuel my arts and crafts rampage?

+1 for bringing back some of that "o0o0o0o" inspiring stuff. Hell, at least give me a nicer table. I'm using the same picnic bench and dented, rusty alchemy still that I've had since DAY ONE. SURELY if I can afford a diamond encrusted flask and blade of electrum, I can afford a decent workbench. Throw me a frickin' bone here.

I'd also like to be able to drop a cluster and make 12 crystals too. How the hell does a recipee work where you have a wind crystal that turns itno 16 lightning shards? It's absurd.

I would even take it at a reduced success rate and reduced quantity output. I'd rather do something fun for 12 hours than something tedious for 20min.

We should hear some news on the new crafting changes in tomorrows live letter.

Not long to go now :D

i do miss the synthing this current crafting monstrosity we have needs to die why did they creat dol/doh anyway its silly

I forget, how did synthesis work? You had to select a crystal and all ingredients for each individual synth, right?

How did we ever grin and bear through the invisible exp bar for those? lol

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Originally Posted by Sephrick

I forget, how did synthesis work? You had to select a crystal and all ingredients for each individual synth, right?

How did we ever grin and bear through the invisible exp bar for those? lol

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I suspect it's related to the issue where we once needed to reach 1.0 through a series of 0.1 and 0.2 to gain a level (100 synths to 50 if you're unlucky) and then all of a sudden it was 1,891,150 EXP gained 300-500 at a time. (4,000 to 6,000 synths to 50)

nevertheless the absolute randomess of skill ups.
Yeah, we totallly miss that system :|

Yea I do a lo.... You lose Venomous Claw, Shining Cloth, *insert rare/valuable item here*


Nope. Not one bit.

Yes, I absolutely miss sitting around, selecting and reselecting items in my inventory space, hoping that the gods of random smiled on me today - only to see the crystal shatter.

I miss spending thousands of gil on materials, only for the purpose of grinding, and ending up only getting about 0.5 skillups from all of it.

I miss the Auction House, where it was nearly impossible to produce a profit unless you farmed the mats yourself.

I miss sitting around at the guild halls, waiting for the shop counter to open so I could get a small window of a chance to purchase much needed materials before the bot-buyers would grab them all.

I miss gathering, where I had disposable axes and pickaxes, and had to run around endlessly to find a random node where I could get maybe one or two pieces of material.

Yes, I do miss all that. /s

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Originally Posted by Antonn

Yea I do a lo.... You lose Venomous Claw, Shining Cloth, *insert rare/valuable item here*


Nope. Not one bit.

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As far as I know, that still happens just as regularly due to people over-confidently bolding the odds in a damning gamble that consumes 100% of your input-items 100% of the time. Or maybe that's the trade-off... you can pansy out more often (if you can convince yourself not to neglect probability (a rare talent)) or go for the gold knowing you'll lose it all.

Current crafting is very similar to the old combat system in FFXIV - you have to focus just enough that you can't do much else while you're engaged, yet all you really have to do is repeatedly hit the same button. Why have something which is so utterly boring always demand your attention with prompts? We're just making stuff, it's never going to be that exciting no matter how much control you give players. Once the initial luster wears off it just becomes mildly annoying, you may as well offer an experience in which players must manually control their own breathing.

In my opinion synthing should be completely simple and the process mostly autonomous as it was in FFXI. The way of slowing people down and making it somewhat interesting should come in finding the right ingredients, not some gimmick just for the sake of making it 'different'.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

As far as I know, that still happens just as regularly due to people over-confidently bolding the odds in a damning gamble that consumes 100% of your input-items 100% of the time. Or maybe that's the trade-off... you can pansy out more often (if you can convince yourself not to neglect probability (a rare talent)) or go for the gold knowing you'll lose it all.

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But see, the difference is there's player choice involved. Even if it is somewhat of an illusion of a choice.

you could keep going with the idea of illusion of choice till you realize that your entire life is an illusion. but hey this ain't philosophy.

I don't miss the unpredictability of leveling a craft skill in XI ^^;

I do miss, however, the roles each elemental crystal played in relation to the craft you were about to perform. XIV sorta just has a random assortment which you have to hope you have enough of on hand to do what you wish to do and doesn't feel like there's a lot of rhyme or reason for the shard requirements.

I also liked being able to gather or craft on a whim without having to change classes.

Crafting may be far from good in XIV, but it is a ton better than it was in XI. Having to just hope you'll get any "xp" (skillups) from each attempt was annoying, especially later on when those skillups were pretty rare.

I think the main reason people don't remember being as bored in XI while crafting is that the materials to even skill up on were usually so expensive every synth was a nerve-wracking experience. Spend 5 hours hunting materials for 30 minutes of synthing only to get a total of 0.1 skillups. That's not boring, that's just annoying.

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Originally Posted by Vawn

Crafting may be far from good in XIV, but it is a ton better than it was in XI. Having to just hope you'll get any "xp" (skillups) from each attempt was annoying, especially later on when those skillups were pretty rare.

I think the main reason people don't remember being as bored in XI while crafting is that the materials to even skill up on were usually so expensive every synth was a nerve-wracking experience. Spend 5 hours hunting materials for 30 minutes of synthing only to get a total of 0.1 skillups. That's not boring, that's just annoying.

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more like insane. I was one of the players who skipped crafting entirely. People who had a craft at 100 were truly elite bums, especially the weavers and armorers. They dominated the market.

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I would even take it at a reduced success rate and reduced quantity output. I'd rather do something fun for 12 hours than something tedious for 20min.

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This board is so full of trolls lately.

Ah, masochists.

Seeing my char actually get EXP for crafts is priceless. Seeing me have a measure of control over my synths is amazing.

The boring grind not-so-much, but making a weapon that was several levels above my own, which was a tough battle in and of itself, was about one of the most rewarding experiences I've had while crafting. It was enough to allow me to continue to push forward.

I wouldn't mind removing our current illusion of choice with 'standard synthesis.' Even if they are giving us an auto-complete with no chance of HQ, I would like to add the Final Fantasy part back that came with XI's synthesis.

Perhaps removing the silly white/yellow/red colors that honestly make statistically little difference and just put back the elemental sphere with appropriate sound effects?

I'm sure no one would miss the unstables in that regard :p

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Originally Posted by Denmo

I miss spending thousands of gil on materials, only for the purpose of grinding, and ending up only getting about 0.5 skillups from all of it.

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This. A thousand times this. As well as the "Oh crap its a Full Moon and Firesday. So I need to face Southwest to craft with an Ice Crystal."

And then people complain when I complain about FFXI-2 posts.

What if they made crafting like this. First you select the material and have the appropriate level and you hit synthesize. Character then pulls out tools and much like repairs it either succeeds or fails. The more things like training books and traits will increase chance of success. Absolutely under no circumstances would you fail a synth below your level
That way synth is faster and more efficient and totally predictable.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

Nope. Don't miss that at all. Don't like the new stuff either.

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Pretty much this for me

Wonders if people keep forgetting the fact that DoL and DoH was made the way it was for people who wanted to do just that in an MMO as opposed to endless mob killing. While it doesn't appeal to most people, myself included, this is the way things are. My suggestion if you don't like it don't do it. I for one think that this was a nice change of pace for an MMO and hope that they keep it the way it is. Now if they would just bring back accessories for goldsmithing. Why take away rings and ear-rings is beyond me.

I guess I was a minority on that one... I didn't mind the .5 skillups on an hour of crafting and tons of materials, because I actually enjoyed the crafting, or at a minimum, didn't mind it. Bear in mind I was cooking and fishing, I did not touch upon other crafting very much other than woodworking and such here and htere.

Also, fire crystal = burn, wind = cut, etc made a hell of a lot more sense. Now i"m mixing every fish with wind to make sand? I'd thinkt hat would be dark crystal = decay.

The crystal elements doing things like burning/cutting/decaying, that's all still there. If you're making ingots you can expect to use fire. If you're joining peices together, earth. If you're cutting up stuff, wind. It hasn't changed much at all from FFXI's idea of crystal synthing. You guys just don't have to think about it anymore because you're not crafting by selecting a crystal initially.

I'm not a big fan of crafting either atm, mainly because of the time it takes to start and finish a product. The only upgrade to crafting since FFXI is basically that it's more accessible through leves. As for the animation it's a little meh, but it represents it's craft a lot better than what it did in FFXI.

I stopped skilling up my Cooking (in FFXI) at level 94.

Gathering all 7-8 ingredients for a recipe was troublesome. Putting each of the ingredients into the synthesis window was a big hassle. Farming for the ingredient (King Truffle, in my case) was as cruel. I can't even understand how could I put up with that. The love of crafting, maybe?

No, I can't say I miss FFXI's synthesis style. Though the current crafting system requires actual tool (main hand equipment) to synthesize items, I love this new system way better. The "recipe" button added even more win to this. No more scrolling through my untidy inventory to look for each of the 8 ingredients one by one, hurray!!!

I also love how player's skills, material's quality, craft class abilities, and player's decision/choice while crafting now have big influence in the outcome (failure, success, HQ) instead of just luck/moon phase/direction/etc. like in FFXI.

And yeah.....the randomness of gaining skill points....was almost unbearable!

P.S. To confess, when I hopped from FFXI to FFXIV and found out how the crafting is, I was like dancing around in my room with joy.

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Originally Posted by Anonymoose

+1 for bringing back some of that "o0o0o0o" inspiring stuff. Hell, at least give me a nicer table. I'm using the same picnic bench and dented, rusty alchemy still that I've had since DAY ONE. SURELY if I can afford a diamond encrusted flask and blade of electrum, I can afford a decent workbench. Throw me a frickin' bone here.

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Damn, you have a picnic table for Alchemy?? I want one of those..Is that a crafted item or dropped?

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Originally Posted by nasomi

Also while you're at it, fix fixing to be like it was too. I liked fighting hte fish, not this turn based crap.

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I forgot to reply to this.

No thanks.

Current system is great now. As a fisher level 49 from FFXI, I have had enough of the wrist-hurting tug-o-war against the fish. FFXIV's fishing is fine and has no risk of me breaking my keyboard.

I just want Donkey Knight

you dont like pulling an anvil outta you pocket

FFXI was 5% break chance + 5% for every level under recipe level. Each sub-craft adds another 5% break chance.
On skill-ups, 1-60 you get 2/3 chance of a skillup on a synth, which drops to 1/3 until 100.

You can't do anything to make a difference on those chances - so no, I don't miss it one bit.

I spent 5mil on dragon meat to get cooking from 98.5 to 99. No thanks.

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Originally Posted by Aleczan

I forgot to reply to this.

No thanks.

Current system is great now. As a fisher level 49 from FFXI, I have had enough of the wrist-hurting tug-o-war against the fish. FFXIV's fishing is fine and has no risk of me breaking my keyboard.

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This is how fishing should be