Treatise on Crafting

[Kestiel]

I’d like to first off state that this is not going to be a short post, nor a simple jaunt, so those who can’t find the time to read through it then I apologize. I'll be breaking this up into several posts since the limit is 10,000 characters and with the hopes that it will be easier to digest.

I want to begin with the acknowledgement that like most of the game, the crafting system has what feels like massive potential, but the implementation has shown a severe lack of both foresight and implementation. While the future looks promising with the Materia System and changes to Repairs the core mechanics lack any definitive assessment (at least openly) or direction aside from a vague mentioning here and there about making an option to synth easier items quickly (because those of us who use hasty hand know how finicky it is) and a few other options they aren’t quite sure about. I also (like many others) want to like this game, but it seems as if the game itself is self-conscious or anti-social and seems determined to make your stay as annoying or frustrating as possible.

The changes to the SP gain on DOH were nice, even after the slight nerf it’s still far better than it was when I got Blacksmith to 50, and so that’s one aspect I don’t completely feel is entirely off. However, I want to touch base that I don’t like the idea of DOH or DOL being “just another class” they’re specific in their roles and are clearly not meant to be on the battlefield whatever some people may desire. They should be separate from the DOW/DOM classes and that should include the SP caps and anything else that will help to add more flavor and uniqueness to the DOH/DOL classes.

I don’t have any suggestions here except to unchain them from the DOW/DOM classes, as I can’t imagine many people would prefer to run out onto the battlefield wearing their soft doublets and caps with a tapping hammer to face off against the wild beasts of Eorzea. I don’t however think that DOH/DOL should be left defenseless in the wild, as I myself have had great use of wrist flick and stone throw to stun enemies or escape with my spleen still firmly nestled inside my body. As well I’ve comically killed several enemies on Blacksmith using stone throw because I forgot any sort of DOW/DOM arm back in my mog- I mean retainer.

Random AKA RNG (Random Number God)
Many people have complained about this, it’s no wonder since it has plagued and pervaded the vast majority of FFXIV. We even had it as the primary way in which to rank up our DOW/DOM classes for some time before they fixed that. I’ve played FFXI for most of its life (but quit around the time the mini-expansions came out) and RNG is something I became intricately acquainted with. Most things that were important, drop-rate, success on certain NMs or missions, fishing, crafting, harvesting/mining were all part of the Church of RNG. Some people could get a HQ while meeting all the criteria while others had to struggle through for dozens upon dozens of synths.

Now in FFXIV I – like many others I know – hoped that crafting would be more skill-based or at least logical. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. However, throughout the entire time I’ve played and through several patches I have noticed the RNG has never changed (aside from the weighting from standard to rapid and then back to standard). I can synth in 0% durability at the same time of day, moon phase, sitting position, direction what-have-you (for those of us who are superstitious as crafters tend to be – anything for that perceived +0.01% success right?) and passed with flying colors often with 50-75+ durability left. Then in the same exact sitting on multiple crafts, over and over throughout the months I have had fully repaired clothes, all level appropriate, master support (which really doesn’t seem like it does anything aside from when it’s called for and then as of a patch or few ago it seems nearly necessary to have correct support or higher) full moon what have you, and failed miserably without even a snowball’s chance in Hell.

This RNG worshipping by SE has got to stop, either by severely limiting its effects to more tolerable levels, or giving us more information as to the exactly effects of various stats and influences on crafting. We should either be enlightened as to why this is happening so we have the capability to prevent it, or the system should be changed so it is less of a hassle.

In line with this I feel the abilities should be constantly available until utilized, this is another archaic and unnecessary step to adding RNG to the mix. Why can I randomly use an ability I learned by spending days honing my skills? Am I lobotomized? Did a meteor strike my head and I can only sometimes remember how to be slightly more skillful for a few strikes of my tool? If we were allowed to have our abilities 100% open throughout the synth we could tier and appropriately stagger our abilities (or stack them) in order to utilize more skill to synth. Therefore SE could make skills more necessary to accomplishing particular synths, taking away from the current best/easiest method: mashing standard until you develop arthritis. *

I know many crafters who used all their abilities skillfully and felt they really mattered and initially loved the system. That is, until they stopped doing that in the face of defeat due to RNG, this is when most crafters get lazy and start spamming standard w/o many or any skills utilized, and they typically find that the total success % of their synths doesn’t alter much and if it does it’s so small that it’s a moot point. Why try to skillfully grind when you can watch movies/anime, read a book or chat on LS or another program altogether and simply spam one button, press down, hit recipe, then rinse and repeat?

Red orbs, gold orbs, flashing orbs are all it seems pretty meaningless since you can just spam through them with very little consequence. I’d like to actually have various prompts; if the color is white x ability / progression ability (I would hope for more than just standard/rapid/bold) is best to use, if it’s red then y ability should be used. Rather than, oh it’s flashing isn’t that pretty, I’ll just mash standard again?

Because of this, I feel like I would prefer XI’s brand of “roll the dice” and be done with it. At least then people wouldn’t be forced through a synth that fails randomly for no reason and no matter what abilities you use, it fails regardless. In situations like that I often wish I could just synthesize in one action (not talking hasty hand since the success rate is rather atrocious even at high levels with best support) and then I would either pass/fail in a span of 10 seconds and then I can do it all over again. At least then I would knowingly be casting my dice and letting RNG take control instead of receiving pseudo-control where all too often personalized and thought-out input does little to nothing to change that particular synths outcome.

People are in some places botting because of this, and why are they driven to this? Because it’s annoying and mind-numbing to constantly spam when you could be doing something more productive; crafting to them has moved from the potential to be fun and enjoyable to being a menial task that is no more than a means to an end.

If the crafting mini-game were fun, less random and more able to be utilized by a thinking player than a key-pressing script/bot then not only would it be harder for some bots to spam crafts but it’d keep more people wanting to actually craft since it’d be more enjoyable. This lack of enjoyment and the insufferable depths to which RNG pervades crafting leads me to my next point below.

[Kestiel]

To many crafters these little wobbling orbiting rings of rage-inducing color are one of the most hated things about crafting. I’ve tried everything to stave them off, getting abilities that prevent their effects (one from Carpentry, and another that prevents them destabilizing from Armorer, also the Brands from each craft), changing my elemental alignments every which way all to little effect. The only thing that has allowed any moniker of control are the Brand abilities, I can typically utilize the appropriate brand wait 1-3x and about 90% of the time the chaotic vanishes. Usually only to reappear as another element or the same again once the Brand wears off.

Perhaps these Brands are intended to be equipped 100% of the time for when there’s a level cap and you’re not currently grinding to rank 50 (which contains an innumerable amount of chaotics the closer you get). I’ve had appropriate gear, damaged gear, rings, no rings, earrings, like I’ve mentioned everything I could possibly come up with that would aid me, and they still plague all my synths and every crafter I know is the same. We know what chaotics specifically do due to an old lodestone post (which for some reason they’ve completely stopped giving us those explanations of the game since about the time the forums came to be, with the exception of explaining gathering fatigue, I may be unaware of other gems however) but that doesn’t really help us.


Well, I suppose that’s not true, we know to fear Lightning, Wind, and Ice because those effects are absolutely terrible and also incredibly common. Additionally the RNG plays a comical role here too; it’d make perfect logical sense if the only chaotics you experienced were in relation to the shards/crystals/clusters you were utilizing. Except that’s not the case at all. If I’m using wind shards only, I can get fire, water, ice, lightning all in the same synth without any real relation to what I’m doing. If we’re only utilizing a single element to synthesize, how is it exactly that we’re getting all these other elements?

This is another method in which enlightenment would help, if we knew the causes of chaotics (provided they didn’t say they randomly occurred) we may be able to prevent them more readily and stop them from ruining our experience and our drive to play the game.

At a time when so few people play a free game, despite so many buying the box we should be focusing on playability – as they’re doing for the battle fixes. The main reason I don’t play much (read: quit) DOW/DOM is because I prefer DOL/DOH to the current battle system, even with the issues DOH has. The population speaks volumes for how fun and accessible the game is, as the average player tries a game, doesn’t like something and quits. That’s normal, that’s healthy, those of us who still play, and post on the forums and read them, we’re not normal.

A lot of us play or read or post in hopes that the game will get better because we want to like the game. And this is something Yoshida seems to have understood some, we don’t hate him we don’t hate SE per se, we hate how the game has come out and we want it to be changed so we can have fun because we want to play it.

But I digress, as I previously was stating enlightenment would help us here. How does Magic Craftsmanship exactly affect each synth? Craftsmanship? Control? Gear damage? Food? Support? We know a bit about them, but not enough and definitely not even ballpark proportions we should have. The RNG makes it nigh impossible to get any solid scientific data on what works and what doesn’t, it all devolves into “well I think M.Craft helps a lot with making x, but not y.” This is bad, when players cannot see the way they affect the gameplay then it no longer becomes a game to play and rather a chore or a gauntlet to slog through on the way to that far, distant goal which of course you’ll likely run into fatigue - which doesn’t make the path any jollier.

As Yoshida mentioned, people need to be able to clearly see the effects they have upon the game and their characters by doing different actions, if not it’s a lot like playing a card game but having no idea of the rules, only a vague clue. Maybe you get an ace but this turn it’s worthless, but in three turns – if you get a queen too of course – it’ll be worth 50pts. Random analogy aside, this is one of the serious problems with the game, and SE at large. I understand completely that Yoshida and a lot of the team working on it now didn’t design it so they’re coming across a lot of things they didn’t know too, but this is something that we as players need to know. This brings me to one of my personal theories about crafting, that I believe heavily influences both failures and more specifically chaotics.

[Kestiel]

There are several skills referencing “risk” Harmonize resets it, many skills reduce it but reduce success as a trade-off and a Blacksmith skill (High Return) which increases chance of success in proportion to risk, which to most people don’t make any sense. What is risk? I believe I’ve deduced that risk is a hidden stat (it wouldn’t be SE if not I suppose?) akin to the progress bar. It starts at a random rate, affected by rank vs synth, appropriate support and the like, the more things stacked against you (inappropriate gear, low stats, wrong – as in too low or no support, or hell even if it’s raining outside in Auckland perhaps!) the higher risk seems to start off with.

Every action appears to increase risk, failures more than successes, critical successes least of all it’d seem. Risk increases it would seem, the chance of not just failure but more important chaotics and therein their destabilization (when they explode and you lose half your quality and a lot of durability) the chance is still there however – and it seems fairly high as a baseline. However this coincides with SE stating that chaotics are more common as you head towards the finish of the synth, which makes sense if every action increases risk, which would thereby increase chance of chaotic.

However the RNG deigns it fit to assert its hand even here and so it becomes that much more difficult to get an actual bead on even a neighboring influence. Using Harmonize towards the middle-end of a synth along with High Return has often aided me when the synth would explode, yet RNG makes it hard to discern this with any clarity.

What would be nice, would be another bar above Progress - perhaps red - that’s labeled Risk, and it goes up as you gather said Risk. Keeping an eye on this bar could alert players to potential catastrophe and perhaps waiting or another new ability could be added that would cool down the risk in exchange for quality/durability/time though not to the point that it’s useless to do, yet enough that people don’t spam to get 100% success.

I’m okay with a little RNG, it adds a small twist but I that’s just it, I want it small if it’s there, not walloping me with a cudgel the size of a chocobo. Tweaking the RNG, adding something like that gauge and perhaps altering how risk affects the synth so that it becomes important to let your synth rest or in some cases you would be working against the clock (as in the risk slowly fills over time). As such, working with particular materials that would dry out, or become less pliable the risk could slowly tick up the longer you take, so instead there could be an option to douse, stir whatever is relevant to keep the risk down and keep the synth pliable and workable.

Much in the opposite, say you're working with metal you might need to let it cool down since the friction of the hammer, heat of the shards, or what not would otherwise cause the metal to deform. I don’t assume this would be awesome or even great, but it’s just a thought. In this way synths could be a bit more interesting, and I’m sure an actual team of game designers could come up with something engaging and fun (though I and many others thought that about SE when FFXIV came out so…) because even though I don’t think DOH/DOL should be chained to the same standards DOM/DOW have, they do deserve to shine in their own ways and be a viable full-time career if a player so chooses.

[Kestiel]

This is something I nearly forgot to touch on and it’ll be brief (for me). Quality used to come in nice big chunks, but an update a while ago fixed that nonsense, I believe under Yoshida's new direction (why?) for some reason but didn’t alter the base chance of high quality. I rather liked how it was back in alpha or beta where there was a nice, beautifully logical scaling of high quality chance as your quality went up. Up to around 130 I think (it’s been so long I forgot) increased your HQ1 chance up to that point, and at around 130 it was practically a guaranteed HQ1, and then around 100 quality you began to unlock the possibility of HQ2.

I don’t know why this was nixed at all, I HQ randomly and rarely when I actually try. I did a trial of twenty polished pickaxes of those four iron pickaxes were +1, and one was +2. I used all abilities I had to increase quality and the success thereof and everyone but two had 200+ quality. Out of twenty, only two HQ’d and none of which were the original HQ’s which the +1’s averaged around 280 and the +2 had a 315.

I received two, +2 Polished Pickaxes both from NQ’s and both with 207 and 211 respectively without any touch-ups. This seems far too random and not really skill-based or even appropriate versus the amount of time it takes to synth up all the parts, synth the finished product, then synth that finished product yet to another tier. If this were using the older system as I understood it, each of the pickaxes would have HQ’d – and the higher quality pieces would have reflected appropriately with a higher weight towards HQ2 or HQ3.

Going back to that system and perhaps tweaking it a bit so that it wasn’t too easy to crank out a HQ without being high enough in order to get a lot of bolds (which fail far too often even at r50 on a r20 synth) would make it worthwhile to HQ the mats or acquire HQ mats in order to reliably produce HQ end products. This is just another area where logic isn’t used and instead RNG reigns. And it’s something that really should be changed.

In many cases it seems the HQ chance is between fifteen and twenty percent, this is taken from three sample sizes of grinds that I’ve done at consistent levels. Level gap below or under the synth bears little weight in regards to HQ percentage when using a large enough sample size.

What I might like to see are items that influence the synthesis and quality as a whole. Such as an item that would increase quality but decrease durability or simply augment any part of the synthesis with appropriate trade-offs. This could lead to a more intricate crafting system without greatly jeopardizing what is currently in play. This could effectively allow people to realistically HQ3 their base pieces without having to synth a crazy number of raw HQ mats, and then lead to less random HQs – provided the HQ system is fixed or adjusted appropriately.

At the same time I know many people would like to see touch up replaced with something more than a simple reroll of our HQ chance which I would also like to see. As to what that could be, I don’t entirely know.

It would also be nice if they included in their polygon shaving that they touted in this video for those who remember http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc0il...tailpage#t=59s they could instead put it to use for making +1 +2 and +3s all look different, slightly or not from the normal. That being said, it would also be nice if stats were appropriately updated.

As it stands there is no (logical) reason to buy that super duper special +2 crafting armor, as the crafting stats on it just aren’t any different as they would be in any other game with a HQ like system. This is all well and good for weapons and armors which have def/atk/acc and what not but for armor with stats it doesn’t affect them and it really should.

While not really on the same topic, I had hoped when this game was releasing and they were discussing how crafters could “make trends” and “new styles” that we’d be able to decorate the armor and give it special looks that were unique to the crafter. But instead everything looks the same, I’m not necessarily against things looking similar but it’s not very much something that you’d expect in a next-gen game.

The same goes for being able to freely color and swap the given colors we have available. If we only have say four or five colors for a particular cloth, we could at least combine them in different ways, say one sleeve one color and the other sleeve a different color. Buckles of different enamels or leather straps colored differently, instead of needing the actual dyed parts it could be more intuitive and less cluttering by simply allowing the crafter to dye the finished product as has been suggested before on here.

We have now firmly established that I do not know the meaning of brevity and that I am a flagrant liar.

[Kestiel]

Aside from the lag that the game experiences when simply selecting UI elements, there is also the lag that can affect the overzealous crafter who hits the next synthesis action seeing that the orb is still white only to have it update after they’ve hit the synthesis action.

There are a few small things already suggested by many forum goers that would help the UI out. For example, remembering your last button, if you last used Recipes, then once you are completed with your synthesis, Recipes should be highlighted, same goes for Requested Items (which is always selected due to being default). In that same vein, recipes should be allowed to either be queued up like leves or be allowed to exhaust your supply.

Queuing would allow you to set how many synths you would like to do, limited by the amount of available materials you possess (something most MMOs seem to have now). Then just like a leve once you finished the synth you would get a window that would pop up telling you how many you had done, and how many were left and if you wanted to continue.

Then there’s the timer, it should simply be taken out. There’s absolutely no reason to have it there. It doesn’t really do anything beneficial, and most people who talk to people in game have to time and meter their conversations with the timer for synthing, else they’ll lose the use of an ability or fail the synth outright.

I believe Yoshida has already touched upon that they were thinking about removing it and I fully support it. If I look away from my screen for a brief period or get up to open the door just to my room, I am either forced to drag my controller with me like a tether, or let the timer run out. Considering most people find crafting mind-numbingly boring, at least this won’t penalize people for dozing off or getting distracted mid-synth; if the timer could be integrated into an enjoyable and interactive system, I’d be all for it.

[Kestiel]

While this isn’t exactly crafting, it does greatly affect it. I would truly like to see FFXIV move away from negative reinforcement methods, and instead move to positive ones. I’ll state that I don’t like the concept of repairs, I never have in any game and I don’t care how “realistic” it is.

The truth is that for most players it is an annoyance and it does nothing but negatively impact the community. Realism has very little influence here, particularly when the vast majority of our equipment is spewed out from a tennis ball sized glowing orb. I can understand that the system may have been originally designed as a method to establish community and close-knit ties between DOH and the other disciplines, (like the market wards, and we all know how well that turned out, though it has come a long way, many people still believe it’s inferior to a true AH) and that it may have even been intended to keep the economy stimulated or help to provide an exit (via NPC, which hardly anybody uses) for gil of which we currently have a massive influx and nothing to drain it, not even anything to keep an equilibrium with the flow of gil from levequests.

As I mentioned, the game should move towards positive reinforcement rather than negative. Degradation of equipment that you paid for is a negative reinforcement, if you let it degrade you will lose performance through lowered stats and of course the psychological torment of that annoying yellow/red icon. If we instead moved towards a positive approach (perhaps utilizing the materia system or some such new system) instead of repairing, jobs could provide bonuses to the weapon, or socket the weapon with interesting traits. I would prefer not to have a buff, because then it’d simply devolve into people creating or making characters etc just for buffing and personally I hate to see that.

However, I would prefer that to constantly needing to repair. However, taking a page from SE’s FFXI, a system that would take both from atmas in abyssea and evoliths from synergy would be I think an interesting replacement for repairs. Crafters would socket stones/gems/materia/whatever into weapons or armor for a variety of effects, and only crafters could take those things out and replace them with others. In this way a crafter is now serving a beneficial role that is positively enforced by imparting benefits to the playerbase rather than negatively.

It would also grant a greater degree of flexibility than we currently have – especially considering that the stats may become static and I know some people hate that. This would permit some moniker of freedom back to the playerbase without negative effects. At the same time, socketing and the like should be gated by level (or rank if we still have it later on). What I mean is, once you are x rank, then you have a 100% success chance to socket or remove. I for one am quite tired of seeing the RNG play havoc even with a 99% success chance. At some point it just becomes foolish to allow a failure, even if it’s only once in a hundred (which it generally is never that low).

Another good and somewhat related trait would be to take a page from FFXI and/or Aion, recycling armor and weapons essentially – being that most crafters make hundreds of a particular item and then either NPC or flood the wards. Going the FFXI route players could desynthesis the items into base components and recoup some of their losses, hopefully getting some skill in the meanwhile. If however the Aion approach is followed then armors and weapons could be turned into some item that buffs or base ingredients for socketing, the possibilities are all there, they just need to be tapped.



*Certain abilities such as Perfection, Hand of the Gods, Pride of Labor and Assemble help to ease the speed and success rate of skilling up, and many multiple high level crafters possess some or all of these abilities but by no means should they be necessary in order to play the game and enjoy the crafting mini game. In fact many peoples quest for and attainment for these abilities illustrates that there is indeed something wrong with crafting. As it is, I feel crafting is broken in a regard, mostly chaotics and high quality, but nonetheless I still craft albeit at a far more relaxed less fevered pace.

I apologize for the length (and if I missed anything) but it’s been something that’s been rattling inside my head for a very long time and I just wanted to get it out so hopefully some meaningful dialogue can be prompted from it. I just want the game to be more fun so I don’t feel like I’m playing old-school dynamis every time I log in and play. I welcome any constructive criticism and to know what anybody thinks, mostly because I’d like to meet people who could bear through all that text (about 4,500 words) and actually comment on it.

[Xenor]

Repetitive tasks will always be boring. You can't make something fun when you're forcing yourself to do it 2000 times, in this case to get your craft to 50. If you're levelling on things where you can enter spam then you're forcing yourself to do it over 3000 times.

Being a skilled crafter comes from knowing your materials, knowing your abilities and when to use what, not the repetitive levelling process. Now I understand many people on here want the RNG factor gone from HQs but in reality you can't make HQing so easy. I'm sat here synthing 29 oak log +3s and it's stupid to suggest I should automatically get 116 oak lumber +3s by removing the RNG. The HQ RNG is needed to make those +3 lumbers worth something. If you get rid of the RNG then you have to make that lumber rarer in a different way such as drastically decreasing the supply of HQ logs into the game and nerfing bold to the point where it's almost worthless. I mean, give me any log and I can bold it to over 300, even NQs. If you take away the RNG then only HQ logs should yield their equivalent HQ lumber.