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

[LineageRazor]

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.

[MN_14]

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.

[Sibyll]

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.

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.

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.

[MN_14]

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.