What happens to the synth window in 1.20?

[Derkatron]

This is partially a speculation post, and partially a vain hope for an answer from someone in the know on the dev/community team.

In 1.20 HQ synths will be done by having all HQ materials, starting from the raw mats from gathering or drops. This is amazing, and I love it; anything that removes randomness is always on the side of the player. This has the side effect of making the Quality rating unneeded, and any abilities that affect quality largely redundant. In fact it partially negates the benefit of primary stats on crafting, since they largely impact quality gains. I have no problem with this at all, on the contrary, I'm greatly looking forward to it. However it does offer an opportunity that hasn't been touched on yet, but would be frustrating to miss: changing the crafting mini-game dramatically.

The HQ change will take the already time consuming and sometimes frustrating crafting mini-game and turn it into a 'will you fail or not?' game. This meaning there's no possible positive you can get once the crafting game starts; the best you could hope for is a totally uneventful series of standard synth presses (since rapid is too risky and careful is pointless). To reiterate, the best outcome of the crafting game is nothing unusual happening at all.

My question is, do you foresee any change in 1.20 coinciding with the HQ change to adjust the crafting process? I certainly hope so, as a nothing-but-negative game is hardly satisfying, at least to me. The hate/love of the crafting game has been beaten to death for a year now (as the mini-game itself hasn't changed significantly since launch) so there's little point in that discussion, but I'm interested in speculation of what changes could come alongside what's been confirmed.

Thoughts?

[Jinko]

They are changing the mini game dramatically, Yoshi hinted that normal crafting will be very streamlined and have no chance of botching on items either below or the same level as your class.

HQ synthing will require more player input to get the best results.

Whether this means that the mini game will be removed completely from normal crafting is anyones guess.

I believe it was in the BG interview I read this, of course I may have read too much into what he was saying but I hope they go this route.

Edit:- Thought I would paste it here:-

Sonomaa (BG): What are you planning on doing about the monotonous crafting mechanics? People literally sit and press enter for hours on end. Why was this specific crafting style chosen over something simplistic and automatic ala World of Warcraft? I hate to keep going back to World of Warcraft, but they're winning.

Square-Enix: It's a matter of priority so far. For the past 10 months, we prioritized all of the things we thought we needed to get fixed first. On the top of that list: UI, Battle System. Also, Content, where the content was based on Guildleves. So, over the past 10 months, it has been fixing the things that needed fixes and adding more content. With the Crafting System, again, we prioritized what needed to be fixed first. The first thing that needed to be fixed was that the Recipe System was way too complex - way too many ingredients, way too many steps to get to your final product. Something that was way too difficult for the novice player to get into. You would have to be hardcore if you wanted to make something. So getting those things fixed first was our priority.

[Yoshida speaks more]

And he's going on more; it's the amount of materials you needed. It wasn't just pressing Enter, it was having to get ALL of these materials before pressing Enter. And so the next step, which we hope to do really soon, is now shorten the number of steps to actually do the crafting. Instead of, you know, sitting down, doing the thing, standing up, getting your stuff, etc. Consolidate all of it and cut down on the steps is the next step being taken.

And one of the things we're planning is two different crafting systems. One that's very simplified and that you're going just for the item you need without having to worry about High Quality, with a small chance of High Quality. Then there's the other system, where it will take more time and effort, but the chance of getting that High Quality item will become higher. So the people who want to spend more time and do it carefully will have the higher chance of a High Quality, and then the people who want to get it done, they have the consolidated system.

BG: Will you be abolishing breaks? Like FFXI had breaks, where you could lose everything and it was heartbreaking.

SE: Yes, we've already begun discussing removing that loss probability. If it's below, at, or just a bit above your crafting level, then the loss probability would be removed. But if it's something far above your crafting level - if you succeed, then you get the experience bonus, but if it is far above your level, having those item lost are a good way...

BG: Agreed. Good.

As for your question what happens to the synth window, well I hope with standard crafting it will be just a matter of selecting your items and making the item with no further crafting window, HQ crafting on the other hand will probably use the old system or something similar to it.

[Derkatron]

Well thanks Jinko, I totally missed that bit of information, good to see my predictions weren't too far off. Needless to say I'm looking forward to the next patch even more now! :-)