Square Enix, please think about both Casual AND Hardcore crafters..

[Maeka]

To those that say RNG isn't fun

Check Poker games which I played by some time a lot for real money- it's all RNG but still famous people still are wining tournaments

The crafting should be fun, clearly SE lack any innovation and fresh thought

Poker has strategy and is a PvP RNG-based game, where the RNG is equal for everybody involved (unless someone is cheating, then it is no fun). That's a bit different than having 4-5 failed Hasty Touches in one synth (I am obviously talking about pre-5.1) where the game is basically giving you the middle finger and you have no recourse of action against it.

Poker has a lot of nuance and strategy behind it, a good player will absolutely destroy you, despite RNG. You might get lucky and win a hand or two but in the end run you don't stand a chance against a pro player. This is how you KNOW that Poker isn't all about RNG. If it was 100% RNG and 0% skill, then everybody would have pretty much equal chances of winning and it would be purely a throw of the dice as to who wins the match. But it's not; there's a clear boundary of skill, where Pro players can just walk all over anybody who doesn't compete at the professional level.

And even then, "winning" a hand is more about being smart about your bets. Fold when you know you aren't going to win, and don't waste money unless you're sure you can win, and knowing your chances of winning. These are all skills that you must use to be successful in poker.

There's no skill in "Will this 80% hasty touch fail for the 4th time in a row, or will it actually work this time?"

[Abyraz]

To those that say RNG isn't fun ... The crafting should be fun, clearly SE lack any innovation and fresh thought

Poker has strategy and is a PvP RNG-based game, where the RNG is equal for everybody involved (unless someone is cheating, then it is no fun). That's a bit different than having 4-5 failed Hasty Touches in one synth (I am obviously talking about pre-5.1) where the game is basically giving you the middle finger and you have no recourse of action against it.

Poker has a lot of nuance and strategy behind it, a good player will absolutely destroy you, despite RNG. You might get lucky and win a hand or two but in the end run you don't stand a chance against a pro player...."

I actually agree with you both of you, and I suspect you are both hitting close to the same point.

The problem with RNG in crafting, imo, hasn't been that RNG exists, the problem has been that the RNG is either too extreme (failed attempts, -50% bad, 400% ex, etc) and/or that we are at the mercy of bad RNG.

What if there were some upsides to failing a step? maybe an ability that you can only use after a fail, or a stacking buff?
What if there were ways to manipulation the condition or at least predict it? (ideally with less extreme/binary points)
What if for consumables, instead of nq or hq, ending quality affects yield?
etc

In my eye, crafting is, or at least could be, a gambling mini game that degrades into a math problem as you out gear, or add enough starting quality.

To make gambling fun, players need to feel that at least some aspect of luck is in their hands, smaller delta between good and bad luck, and frequent enough so that it doesn't feel like feast or famine; I think we can mostly agree that current state of crafting doesn't hit any of those points.

[Tohe-Spidhire]

I am relatively new to the game. However, I have made effort to advance my DoW/M, DoL, and DoH in step, roughly keeping them within five skill levels. My DoL and DoH are about level 53, and I’m close to finishing the ARR MSQ.

For crafting, I have treated it as related to playing the market, looking for demand that was not being served, and determining price levels at which people were willing to buy, yet not so low that I would be discouraged from making the effort.

I have read through this thread, and I appreciate the comments, which help me to understand what is important later in the game. Though there are variable elements to crafting a given item, I agree that there shouldn’t be an arbitrary chance of failure because that is akin to a coin flip. Failure should come from risking the usage of inferior NQ components, or applying the wrong crafting actions.

That being said, in order for crafting to be challenging without the use of macros, crafting needs to be more of a mini-game, as opposed to a predictable sequence of actions. As we know, the number of actions is constrained by CP, and someone in this thread stated that item condition was also a factor (though it varies randomly).

My suggestion is to use HP like personal fatigue, which decreases to indicate how tired you are from working. This is not to say that you could die when your HP was exhausted, but that the crafting would fail. Visually, the HP bar would be discoloured to indicate the portion used up.

Consuming a potion would “top up” your HP, which is akin to drinking some tea or coffee. But potions have cooldowns, which means there is less ease of applying macros, since you might need to wait for your fatigue to recover. Or perhaps when consuming the potion, it does not immediately increase, but instead increases gradually based upon the potion quality.

Gameplay-wise, it would be ideal that CP, condition, and HP (fatigue) formed a trifecta, where careful adjustments to all three were necessary to obtain the HQ item. And through the course of crafting an item, the minigame mechanics were akin to rock-paper-scissors, where you must consider the correct response to maintain the trifecta.

Fundamentally, the point is to have game mechanics that have "juice," adding flavour and detail to the gameplay, keeping the player engaged with their activity.

[Maeka]

I have, in one of these threads, suggested that we change the Conditions, so that there's more of them and each condition offers one bonus and one setback and you would need to plan ahead and actively react to whatever the current condition is, and one of these is always chosen for every step, rather than Normal 90% of the time.

As long as it were tailored so that your chances of winning were always about the same no matter what combination of Conditions you received, it would be an interactive system that would be nigh impossible to macro.

Just to reiterate the idea it would be something like this:

Normal
Calmness: -30% Progress, +30% Quality
Impatience: +30% Progress, -30% Quality
Excitement: -30% Success Chance, +30% Efficiency
Laziness: +30% Success Chance, -30% Efficiency
Caution: -50% Durability Cost, +100% Efficiency
Recklessness: +100% Durability Cost, -50% Efficiency

And perhaps a new ability, oh, "Deep Breath" would cancel the current Condition and set you to Normal for the next step, kinda like you step back and take a deep breath to steady yourself. And they could build other similar actions around affecting the Condition, perhaps something like:

Inner Calm: Reduces the chances of Impatience, Excitement, or Recklessness by 50% for the next 5 steps while increasing your chances of Calmness, Laziness or Caution by 50%. Effect is cancelled by Deep Breath.
Psych Up: Reduces the chances of Calmness, Laziness, or Caution by 50% for the next 5 steps while increasing your chances of Impatience, Excitement or Recklessness by 50%. Effect is cancelled by Deep Breath.

Obviously these are rough numbers and rough draft ideas and are not meant to be taken exactly as-is, they are just a general concept.

EDIT: And also, certain actions could also change the condition, like Byregot's Blessing could cause Excitement or something to happen on the next step. Or perhaps Careful Synthesis could cause Calmness or something like that.

[Callinon]

Hoping they just keep the current meld rates but permit burning extra materia to increase odds by however many materia are used (IE, a 5% chance can become 100% if you burn 20 materia for it).

That might be interesting. I wouldn't mind some form of bad luck protection for materia melding. Blowing up 100 materia to perform a single meld really sucks.

[Ryaz]

I actually agree with you both of you, and I suspect you are both hitting close to the same point.

The problem with RNG in crafting, imo, hasn't been that RNG exists, the problem has been that the RNG is either too extreme (failed attempts, -50% bad, 400% ex, etc) and/or that we are at the mercy of bad RNG.

What if there were some upsides to failing a step? maybe an ability that you can only use after a fail, or a stacking buff?
What if there were ways to manipulation the condition or at least predict it? (ideally with less extreme/binary points)
What if for consumables, instead of nq or hq, ending quality affects yield?
etc

In my eye, crafting is, or at least could be, a gambling mini game that degrades into a math problem as you out gear, or add enough starting quality.

To make gambling fun, players need to feel that at least some aspect of luck is in their hands, smaller delta between good and bad luck, and frequent enough so that it doesn't feel like feast or famine; I think we can mostly agree that current state of crafting doesn't hit any of those points.

Part of the issue is the alrogithm SE uses for FFXIV. It's one of the better RNG generators out there and is actually really randomized- over larger sample sizes. However, it tends to be streaky is smaller samples (which is why you'll see yourself fail a gather at 99% 3 times in a row one time, but HQ it at only 15% chance 3 times in a row the next time.

[Zarabeth]

I really don't understand why anyone would want to make crafting "hardcore". I've been crafting since arr beta and keep my crafts maxed so I can make stuff for my friends. I see no need for hardcore crafting in a casual game. If it's that important to you, just wear gear 5 to 10 lvls below the synth level. Also yo could simply not use the skills that make things easier.

[testname]

I am relatively new to the game. However, I have made effort to advance my DoW/M, DoL, and DoH in step, roughly keeping them within five skill levels. My DoL and DoH are about level 53, and I’m close to finishing the ARR MSQ.

For crafting, I have treated it as related to playing the market, looking for demand that was not being served, and determining price levels at which people were willing to buy, yet not so low that I would be discouraged from making the effort.

I have read through this thread, and I appreciate the comments, which help me to understand what is important later in the game. Though there are variable elements to crafting a given item, I agree that there shouldn’t be an arbitrary chance of failure because that is akin to a coin flip. Failure should come from risking the usage of inferior NQ components, or applying the wrong crafting actions.

That being said, in order for crafting to be challenging without the use of macros, crafting needs to be more of a mini-game, as opposed to a predictable sequence of actions. As we know, the number of actions is constrained by CP, and someone in this thread stated that item condition was also a factor (though it varies randomly).

My suggestion is to use HP like personal fatigue, which decreases to indicate how tired you are from working. This is not to say that you could die when your HP was exhausted, but that the crafting would fail. Visually, the HP bar would be discoloured to indicate the portion used up.

Consuming a potion would “top up” your HP, which is akin to drinking some tea or coffee. But potions have cooldowns, which means there is less ease of applying macros, since you might need to wait for your fatigue to recover. Or perhaps when consuming the potion, it does not immediately increase, but instead increases gradually based upon the potion quality.

Gameplay-wise, it would be ideal that CP, condition, and HP (fatigue) formed a trifecta, where careful adjustments to all three were necessary to obtain the HQ item. And through the course of crafting an item, the minigame mechanics were akin to rock-paper-scissors, where you must consider the correct response to maintain the trifecta.

Fundamentally, the point is to have game mechanics that have "juice," adding flavour and detail to the gameplay, keeping the player engaged with their activity.

I agree with You, that it could be strategy mini game, this people want one click craft :S

[Nandrolone]

I really don't understand why anyone would want to make crafting "hardcore". I've been crafting since arr beta and keep my crafts maxed so I can make stuff for my friends. I see no need for hardcore crafting in a casual game. If it's that important to you, just wear gear 5 to 10 lvls below the synth level. Also yo could simply not use the skills that make things easier.

Over used and silly arguement. Nobody is going to inconvenience themselves and set arbitrary rules to themself just because you say so. People are going to do what’s optimal. And what’s optimal should not be child’s play rotations. That Facet gear that took you 2 minutes per rotation to complete will still sell at laughable prices on the market. Also, Final Fantasy XIV was not intended to be a casual game. If you’ve played since ARR like you claim, you would know that for sure. Back then, there was very little that was handed out to you on a silver platter, and you had to work hard back then.

It was only until 4.0 Stormblood where Yoshida and crew shilled out and slowly turned it into a predominantly casual game. Is it casual now? Yes. Was it intended to be casual? No. Let’s not be disingenuous about the situation. There wasn’t nearly as many crafters back then as there are now. Heck, there wasn’t even as many tanks back then as there are now.

I agree with You, that it could be strategy mini game, this people want one click craft :S

Yoshida will unfortunately continue to listen to the vocal ones on the forum. Which, are the casual crafters. Watch. Melding will eventually become 100% guaranteed, essentially ruling out any sort of accomplishment endgame-crafting wise. Also, Data Center Visit will also be a thing. Mark my words. If hardcore or crafters who don’t want handouts and basically cheat codes, were more vocal, I guarantee you crafting would not be in the state it is in now.

[Zarabeth]

If you’ve played since ARR like you claim, you would know that for sure. Back then, there was very little that was handed out to you on a silver platter, and you had to work hard back then.

First, I bought FFXIV when it first came out back in 2010. My computer at the time could not handle the game so I didn't get to do more than create a character at that time. I came back during the ARR beta. Phase 3, I think and was delighted that I could finally play the game. I believe that was 2013. So, please don't pretend someone is lying when you have no proof of such. Seriously, you can't join the forums unless you play and my join date here was back in 2013. That should give a hint as to how long I've played.

I came here straight from FFXI. Compared to that, no, the crafting here was never hard. Neither was the game. Just because someone has a different opinion than you do is no reason to be snide.