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

[RiceisNice]

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They could get away with adding more crafting conditions that encourages you to rethink your step instead of following a flowchart. For example, aside from the poor/normal/good/excellent (which only has influence on quality increases), you could get "mental" states that gives you a buff for that specific step, such as

- Steady: Adds a 50% success rate to that step
- Ingenious : Current step is = your level or bonus increase to progress
- Frugal : CP cost is lowered by 20
- Impatient : Non-CS steps have success rates reduced by 30%

So on and so fourth. I'd rather them find a way to make crafting more engaging than following a flow chart and pray your 80/90% touches work.

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.
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There's just not enough steps/durability to get your quality increases from anywhere else. If we were to not factor BB in the current setup, you'd need well around 13 successful touches to get to at least 80% HQ rate. And besides, BB getting "Half your quality" is contingent on you getting that many successful IQ stacks in the first place anyway.

[Sibyll]

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Yea exactly. I can't recall if it was here or another thread, but I'll restate it: I don't think RNG is bad, in fact I think the Conditions procs are an excellent use of RNG. I believe that success rate RNG is awful and lazy (especially in regards to crafting and materia melding). The most reaction you get from success rate RNG is that you might have to swap a few hasty touches for rapid synths or you might have to just Reclaim and pray.

I think that Whistle stacks doing special things on 3,6, and 9 was a cool idea and I think Trained Hand and Precise Touch were really good ideas as well. Even the concept of Heart of the Crafter is a really cool idea I've been hoping to see, but it was poorly executed. I'd like to see them rework Ingenuity I and II so they actually do different things rather than slightly better and more expensive (same with WNI/II and CSI/II).

I think that the Aspect: Element condition on ARR recipes could've been handled better. If instead of it being a recipe specific thing they could've had chances for a recipe to get the attune to one of the two elements associated with the recipe (ex: Fire/Earth for BSM) so there would be a reason to cross class Brand skills.

Honestly, even something as simple as Traits so that Comfort Zone and TotT is better on Alchemist than on other classes would've been great. Culinarian could get 100% Reclaim. There are a lot of possibilities here to make BSM feel different from ARM rather than just a slight tune up on which cross class skills you get while the rotation stays more or less the same.

[Katlyna]

There's just not enough steps/durability to get your quality increases from anywhere else. If we were to not factor BB in the current setup, you'd need well around 13 successful touches to get to at least 80% HQ rate. And besides, BB getting "Half your quality" is contingent on you getting that many successful IQ stacks in the first place anyway.

Oh no my proposal would almost certainly require some serious quality adjustments and other dynamic changes to abilities. IQ could be kept but the BB finisher would have to be axed. But I stand by the believe that having progress and quality as one hit finishes at the end is 90% of the dynamic crafting problem.

It would be like if you had to exactly kill a boss, and if you did too much damage you failed. That's basically where crafting is at right now... which is insane.

[RiceisNice]

Oh no my proposal would almost certainly require some serious quality adjustments and other dynamic changes to abilities. IQ could be kept but the BB finisher would have to be axed. But I stand by the believe that having progress and quality as one hit finishes at the end is 90% of the dynamic crafting problem.

It would be like if you had to exactly kill a boss, and if you did too much damage you failed. That's basically where crafting is at right now... which is insane.

Actually, doing too much damage in some instances can cause a wipe. Killing an alarum too soon/off position for example, or pushing an hp threshold too soon on most primals.

[MN_14]

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.

I agree that the crafting system is flow chart like by nature, but I also believe that there's more to it than simply deciding when or when not to use TotT/precise touch/basic touch. My personal flow chart is quite a bit more detailed.

To be honest, the kind of approach you're describing is pre 2.4 and works well now because of the reduced difficulty of the crafts in general and higher base CP available. You have to remember that WNII is a large CP investment and that it could be used for other purposes other than 5 HT and 2 CS2. Using it in that manner is CP efficient, but you're also sacrificing flexibility. It works well under average rng, but when things go south, flexibility is key to pulling yourself out of trouble as best as you can.

You mention using tricks of the trade when SH is down. But is that always a good idea? Why not use tricks when SH2 is up? As long as you keep treating good/excellent procs as mere bonuses, you're limiting your options.

Hypothetically speaking, if you managed to get 40 CP or 60 CP during and immediately after the flawless synthesis phase when SH is down, would you take the craft in the same direction?

[Sibyll]

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I understand that crafting requires you to look at how much cp you have, remaining durability, steps to completion, IQ stacks and many other variables that cause crafts to deviate from being a simple flow chart you can find online or in the forums. I realize that due to RNG sometimes you need to modify your rotation on the fly. To me this is common sense stuff. I'd assume someone that has gotten to this point and done Master Craft II books has figured out math and having a contingency plan prepared if shit gets real. So the crafting 101 advice isn't really necessary.

What I've been trying to say is that even if you handle the RNG in the most flexible manner possible you are still standing on the shoulders of RNGesus. If you fail 5 hasty touches and then Reclaim there is no rotation flexibility that will save you. Your options are to take a 40-50% HQ or Reclaim and if Reclaim fails then you are basically screwed even though you made all the right decisions. Once is once too many. Getting screwed simply because RNG told you no is shit design for a game. Period.

[MN_14]

What I've been trying to say is that even if you handle the RNG in the most flexible manner possible you are still standing on the shoulders of RNGesus. If you fail 5 hasty touches and then Reclaim there is no rotation flexibility that will save you. Your options are to take a 40-50% HQ or Reclaim and if Reclaim fails then you are basically screwed even though you made all the right decisions. Once is once too many. Getting screwed simply because RNG told you no is shit design for a game. Period.

Personally, I think it would be uninteresting if I was absolutely guaranteed an HQ each time. It's also true that failing 5 hasty touches would put any crafter in a tight spot, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you will end up with a 40-50% HQ. Yesterday, I crafted three 2* items starting from 1500-1900 quality and got 100% for only one of them. For one of the other items, I had 4 misses, but managed to end up with 87%. The last one was even worse in that there were 5 misses, but I still ended up with 78%. Yes, I'm still crafting with 721 craftmanship and 728 control with a food buff.

It's these things that I find interesting. For me, it's the bad synths that are far more fascinating to look at than the good ones, but I realize that not everyone will agree with that.

NQs are annoying, but I've probably crafted close to 70 items in total now and I've only fallen below 9 stacks of IQ once. I really don't think rng is that big of a deal.

[Sibyll]

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I'd also find it boring if it were a straight shot to success, however, I don't think the way it's handled is very interesting. True when everything lands (which always seems to be the case on lumber and ingots) the crafts themselves are a face roll. However, getting 100% on something that I probably should've failed doesn't particularly make me feel skilled, rather it makes me feel like I just got really lucky. This usually happens on BSM synths because it's rather tricky to get Reclaim as a cross class. I've had a few synths where I failed 4-5 SH2+HT and proceeded to land 4 out of 5 naked HTs and a naked BB+GS for 100% HQ. You might pat yourself on the back for that, but because it's all RNG I simply get no satisfaction out of that.

You might think I'm insane, but I thought the Master II book turn-ins were more interesting because success was more dependent on effective use of condition procs than anything. This tier of recipes is more about getting as many touches and having as much CP as possible to mitigate the bad RNG.

[MN_14]

I'd also find it boring if it were a straight shot to success, however, I don't think the way it's handled is very interesting. True when everything lands (which always seems to be the case on lumber and ingots) the crafts themselves are a face roll. However, getting 100% on something that I probably should've failed doesn't particularly make me feel skilled, rather it makes me feel like I just got really lucky.

I understand your point and definitely agree that a lot can be done to make crafting much more interesting. I guess the difference is that I don't consider the current type of RNG system to be broken as you'll get your HQ the vast majority of times anyways and there is also potentially a half decent amount of variation in your approach for each craft. It would still definitely benefit from changes for sure.

Lol, this thread has certainly changed topics. It could probably use a name change.

[RiceisNice]

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Using tricks when SH is only viable when you have left over steps (due to durability) or you don't have something like WNII active (where it loses value for every step it's not used). That being said, the setup I'm using only allows for one tricks during my SHII after WNII is used, and only one Tricks during SHII. Which...is still a flow chart mentality rather than adjusting on the go; Each and every step has a pre-determined plan based on whether or not it's good or normal condition and whether is it ok or not to use tricks. That, and the success rate of HT/FS (which then determines whether or not you should reclaim at the end) are the only existing variables and that has led to pre-planned actions for each and every step.