Thread: [dev1016] Post 1.20 HQ Crafting

Originally Posted by Okiura

WoW works cos it's a AH system lol. i have no idea what SE was smoking when they invented market wards. i remember the 1st time i logged in to XIV went in the the wards and went "Wow a dedicaited place for player to bazzar, no more loitering in upper jeuno/rollanberry fields. what a good idea bravo SE" then i went looking for a AH, i was a little shocked when i found out the the MW was the AH lol.

That is what I thought it was too, a place to put up bazaars. I know the MW is not like an AH but you can still search an item and see the going price for it so it's almost like an AH, just less convienient since you got to move from place to place to buy your thing and then go back to the item search.

It's not THAT bad really now that I think about it lol... the function is the same as an AH, you just have to run from retainer to retainer to buy your item. no? The inconvenience is when you want to put things up to sell, you can't search from your retainer and have to go back and forth.

An option when you click on the item while in the bazaar function of the retainer to "search similar item" would solve that I think.

I just wanted to take a moment to point out the gross exaggeration in frein's example of needing to be 20 ranks higher than a synth to hq.

A skilled crafter can synth things above or on par with their current rank and still have a chance to HQ. The likely hood of the higher tiers of HQ are slimmer because they require such a higher level of quality. As it is if a crafter wants to make a high tier hq meaning a 2 or a 3 they can either be significantly higher than the level required to synth and they can crank out the quality because their actions are very likely to be successful, OR they can weigh the odds in their favor by starting with higher quality materials.

Skilled crafters can HQ regardless of their starting mats, but the starting mats increase the odds in their favor. I personally see nothing wrong with this.

My issue with these changes are very much the same issues I had with the first announced change of doing away with refined parts.

They don't fix the inherent issues in the system. They aren't fixing broken aspects to make crafting better, they are changing things just to change things. And this is what has me so confused about people who see the planned changes and cry Manna from Heaven! because these changes don't address the real problems with crafting... they are just arbitrary changes that in all likelihood will cause more problems than they solve.

The high level crafters who aim to crit for profit are still going to do it. They will still be able to charge exorbitant rates for their high level HQ synths. This change won't suddenly mean HQ items are within the reach of everyone, because the people who aren't willing to grind through the ranks of crafting will still largely be unwilling to do it.

Like Sorel, I am largely on the fence about these changes. But the main issue that keeps jumping out at me is most of these fixes are intended to fix things only obliquely related to them. Namely, the economy in general, and the market wards.

I think they are changing too much at once and not necessarily in the right places. And I can understand the standpoint that it's more cost effective to implement alot of changes at once rather than a few over time. But Materia is going to impact the economy in a huge way, as will all these planned crafting changes. Implementing them both at the same time is going to cause a huge mess of data that they aren't going to fully understand. I'd much rather see them introduce materia first and see how it effects the current economy and then plan out how they will change crafting based on the new standard materia creates.

Right now they are working with alot of conjecture, and frankly... I think most of the conjecture is flawed.

updated info from Yoshi-P check it out!

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post308948

Originally Posted by Perrin_Aybarra

I kinda get this but you need to think of the big picture. Not everyone will be able to afford HQ gears or HQ mats to craft HQ gears even if it is more profitable. So there will still be a market for NQ gears for the average player who is low on gils. The rarity (as stated by Yoshi-P) of the HQ mats will make it so that it is rare and valuable to gather and craft the HQ gears but the majority of the mats available will be NQ.

Not only will people not be able to afford the HQ mats but it may also be inherently more difficult to complete the synthesis with HQ materials. Making a HQ finished item should be more difficult, especially since if you do succeed you are guaranteed a HQ finished item.

I posted this in the 'threadnaught' in the general section, but will try and elaborate here.

It looks to me that one motivation for the changes to the HQ methods are to address the discrepancies between crafters and gatherers. With the current system, there is very little motivation to utilize HQ gathered materials. This severely devalues the gathered items and marginalizes the gathering classes. The only way to address this is to make HQ gathered materials make some sort of impact. If HQ gathered materials don't make it easier to HQ, then the HQ gathered materials have no value.

For example, someone wanting to make a +3 [item=10002062]Iron Chain[/item] in order to make a piece of gear, the following chain of synths must occur:

Iron Ore ~> Iron Nuggets ~> Iron Ingots ~> Iron Wire ~> Iron Rings ~> Iron Chain ~> [finished piece]

The correlation between quality and HQ is so weak (especially for materials, with no touch ups), the using HQ Iron Ore has essentially zero impact on the likelihood of getting an HQ Iron Chain. And THAT completely marginalizes gatherers.

The only real solution is to shorten the chain, and make HQ gathered materials make the process of HQing the ingredient easier. Now, when I say 'easier' I mean 'easier then HQing without HQ materials', not 'easier then it is now'. SE does need to take the step of increasing the difficulty of making the HQ ingredients. Keeping it the same difficulty as making HQ iron nuggets now would just be too easy, in my opinion.

Regarding the 'auto HQ finish item when all HQ ingredients are used'

I agree with Arcell that completing the synthesis when all HQ ingredients are used should be more difficult. Not impossibly difficult, but enough so that a simple "spam standard synth" isn't going to be enough. Make the players sweat and work a little to make sure that the synth is successful.

For those of you around in closed beta, the increased quality from ingredients USED to make the synthesis steps more likely to fail. It was to the point where HQ mats were worth LESS then NQ mats, because starting with 300Q pretty much doomed the synth if you were an equal rank crafter. So, SE changed the system so that Quality from mats didn't increase difficulty, but earned quality still did. Going forward, quality increase will be irrelevant for finished items, so please re-instate the increased difficulty of the synth!

Another aspect of this change is that it is not as severe as people are making it out to be. The ability to 'touch up' for finished item already makes getting an HQ result from a finished item far far easier then getting an HQ result from a material/part synthesis.

On the one hand, the process of HQing a finish item is easier, because there is no luck-factor involved in the final step.

On the other hand, the process of HQing a finish item will be harder, because EVERY ingredient must be HQ now. Ponder this for a moment. How many crafters use a +3 Oak Composite Bow when making trying for an HQ Crab Bow? Not many. Instead, they pick out those ingredients that are easier to get HQ, leave the others NQ, and let repetition and random chance result in the desired +3 item. This system does away with that and requires an HQ ingredient at every slot.

By pushing more of the challenge to making HQ ingredients, it also increases the impact of HQ gathered materials, thus letting gatherers play in the economy, too (as I mentioned in my previous post).

Originally Posted by Amineri

On the one hand, the process of HQing a finish item is easier, because there is no luck-factor involved in the final step.

On the other hand, the process of HQing a finish item will be harder, because EVERY ingredient must be HQ now. Ponder this for a moment. How many crafters use a +3 Oak Composite Bow when making trying for an HQ Crab Bow? Not many. Instead, they pick out those ingredients that are easier to get HQ, leave the others NQ, and let repetition and random chance result in the desired +3 item. This system does away with that and requires an HQ ingredient at every slot.

My initial instinct would have been to make the percentage chance of HQ-ing a Finshed Product equal to the percentage of ingredients that are HQ. So if you have all HQ ingredients you get the 100% HQ, but if you only have half HQ ingredients you only get 50% chance to HQ.