Concept: Puzzle-based Synthesis Minigame

[Misteyes]

Sorry for the long post. I still don't have a playable prototype (I made some mistakes when creating the structures that contain the board data and have been bogged down by coding around those mistakes), so I'll just post a nauseatingly detailed description of what I had in mind when I suggested a puzzle-based minigame.

Selecting Recipes
Selecting recipes functions exactly the same as it does currently. User either inputs materials, selects a recipe, or goes to Requested Items, etc. and then presses Main Hand or Off Hand.

At the final confirmation screen, there is an option to use Hasty Hand and skip this minigame entirely. After completing or failing a hasty hand synthesis, a dialogue box appears asking the player if they want to repeat the same synthesis, with a default option of Yes.

The Game Board
Once synthesis begins, the player is presented with the game board.

The game board is some polygon that can be created by a bunch of equilateral triangles. In my prototype, it's a Hexigon, made from six triangles which are each further subdivided into 4 smaller triangles.

Each face of these triangles has a color, corresponding to one of the six elements, and a magnitude. Every triangle also has a current direction of rotation. During play, these triangles will rotate and different effects will be produced based on which two faces touch.

Above the board, there are guages for each stat, including instability in all six elements. To a size are a list of synthesis abilities (such as Preserve, Perfection, Hand of the Gods. etc). Below the board is an "End Turn" button.

A Turn
Player Input
The basic action which the player can take is to change a triangle from rotating clockwise to counterclockwise, and vice-versa. Doing so costs a point of Control (based on the Control stat, more on that later). The player can also use any synthesis ability. All equipped synthesis abilities are always available, but can only be used once per synthesis. Once the player is satisfied (or after a certain time limit expires), the turn ends and all triangles rotate 120-degrees (one face) in their current direction. Each turn costs a point of Durability (based on Craftsmanship stat).

Collision Resolution
Then, everywhere where two faces touch, a collision occurs, depending on the relative position of the two elements on the element wheel.

Element and its weakness (IE: Ice and Fire) collide: The element that is defeated has its magnitude reduced by one. If its magnitude becomes zero, it becomes neutral (gray).
Element and its opposite (IE: Water and Fire) collide: Both elements' magnitudes are reduced by the others magnitude. This will always result in at least one of them becoming neutral. In addition, elemental instability for both elements is increased based on the magnitude of the two tiles. To keep things interesting, I think we can afford to have some randomness in the amount of instability that's generated by each reaction, since it's possible to avoid these reactions entirely.
Element and its neighbor (IE: Earth and Fire) collide: No effect
Element and itself (IE: Fire and Fire) collide: Instability in that element type rises slightly.
Element and Neutral collide: The element tile splits. The neutral tile acquires the element of the other tile along with half its magnitude (rounded down). The magnitude of the original tile is cut in half (rounded up).

Victory and Defeat
The objective is to reduce the total magnitude of the board below a certain amount (based on Magic Craftsmanship). Even after reaching the threshold for NQ (subject to tuning, but I'd imagine it'd be about 10%), the player has the option to keep playing to try for an HQ, or can end the synthesis at any time. Completely clearing the board by wiping out the last two tiles in an opposite reaction will always result in an HQ+3, or possibly a special HQ+4. (This will almost never happen.)

If Durability falls to zero, the Synthesis immediately ends. If the player has passed the completion threshold, it ends in completion (possibly HQ completion if they've passed an HQ threshold). Otherwise, it ends in failure.

If an elemental instability maxes out, the synthesis immediately ends in failure.

Synthesis Abilities
All synthesis abilities would have to be rewritten for the new system, obviously. I haven't gone through and rewritten all of them, but I have concepts for some.
Preserve, for example, might give the player the ability to Stop triangles temporarily, rather than just changing their direction.
Perfection would abjure control costs for a single turn (and extend the time for that turn), allowing the player to set the board exactly how they like.
Hand of the Gods would abjure durability costs until the player spends a certain amount of control, so that if the player has already set up the board, they can run the board with exactly those momentums for as long as they like before taking charge again.

Elemental Brands
Brand of Lightning and its kin would not be executed as other synthesis abilities are. Instead, by clicking on one of the elemental instability bars above the board, the player can toggle on that brand. Only one brand can be enabled at a time, but while it is enabled, that element's instability does not rise. Having a brand enabled increases Durability cost, but they can be toggled freely during the game.

Hasty Hand
As mentioned at the top, Hasty Hand can be used to skip this minigame entirely, and instead have a random chance of success or failure. The success rate of Hasty Hand would be increased (to about the same effect rate as spamming standard in the current system) - but have zero chance of producing an HQ product. Hasty Hand would be acquired at level 5, instead of 15.

Board Generation
The algorithm for generating a board starts by randomly coloring a single random triangle and giving it a magnitude of 1. It then, for several iterations, randomly changes the direction of all triangles and executes reactions in reverse.

More difficult recipes would run the generation algorithm for longer. The board generation is not displayed to the player. (It would look cool, but it would be too easy for a bot to track.)

The number of iterations that this algorithm has run for is the board's "Difficulty" and is dependent on the recipe. Difficulty correlates with, but is separate from, level. Producing Velveteen Cloth has higher difficulty and level than Cotton Cloth, but a lower difficulty than Cotton Turbans or other finished Cotton goods.

The Effects of Stats
As mentioned above
-Control determines the number of times the player can change the direction of a triangle during play. Ballpark number, which would have to be tested and tuned. is Synthesis Difficulty + Control.
-Craftsmanship determines the number of turns the player gets (each turn is a chance to change direction of triangles, followed by the execution of reactions). Ballpark number: (2*Difficulty + Craftsmanship)/3. This makes craftsmanship more important for producing finished products than raw materials.
-Magic Craftsmanship lowers the threshold for victory. This one has to treadmill with synthesis level, and even when attempting syntheses far below the player's current level, its effect must be capped, probably at around 20% for NQ, 10% for HQ+1, 5% for HQ+2, 2% for HQ+3. Tuning this stat will require a lot of data on the success-rates of actual players.

Also
-Elemental resistances increase the amount of instability a player can take.
-If the player's level is lower than the recipe's level, their effective stats are all reduced by 4% per level below and increases the difficulty of that recipe by 2. Being higher level than a recipe conveys no advantages except that the player's stats are already higher (to prevent high level crafters from flooding the market with HQ low-end products).

The grind
EXP for hasty hand synths would be increased slightly. EXP for repair would be increased significantly. EXP for synthesis that's actually played out would be increased based on synthesis difficulty (but generally somewhere between twice and three times as much as it is currently).

Advantages of this System
HQ is awarded for skillful play only. A long time ago, I HQ+3'd a Hempen Cowl without even trying, at 56 quality. I've been bitter at the synthesis system ever since, because it's randomness all the way down. I got 56 quality because my abilities (randomly) succeeded, and then the game (randomly) decided that in that particular case, 56 quality was enough for an HQ+3.
It is not good design to have the game hand out HQ arbitrarily. Yes, HQ should be exceptional and rare, but it should be an reward that is given for exceptional play, not given out randomly.

It's un-bottable. In order to evaluate all possible options, an AI that plays this game would have a branching factor of 2^24 (roughly eight million), and a depth equal to the durability of the recipe. In order for a bot to determine the optimal solution, it would need to consider 2^24^durability boards, which no computer now or in the next twenty years will have enough RAM (or even hard disk space) to do.
This means that any bot for this game would have to rely on shortcuts and "known good strategies." Since bots do not benefit from practice and cannot develop new strategies, this means that good players will be better than even the best bots.
Hasty Hand could, of course, be botted by an autofire controller, but that's deliberate.

HQ is still rare (if it's tuned right). Assuming that the stats, especially Magic Craftsmanship, are tuned well, the large possibility space to consider means that players will not reliably play perfectly either. Some masterful players may be able to get HQs reliably, but not without working for it. Certainly much harder than just hitting Bold Synthesis over and over on a recipe 20 levels below you is now.

It's optional. All the people who are currently enjoying the getting their crafting EXP by spamming standard over and over while watching TV still have the option to select hasty hand once and then spam that while watching TV, but they will consume considerably more materials for that EXP than someone who actually plays the game.

[chocothief]

(I made some mistakes when creating the structures that contain the board data and have been bogged down by coding around those mistakes)

If this is a joke, you win.

[Misteyes]

If this is a joke, you win.

It's not, sadly.

I actually am/was writing a stand-alone prototype (with a really ugly looking WinForms UI) to demonstrate what this system's gameplay would be like, but I made the decision to divide the triangles in the board into groups of four and then store those groups which are 60-degrees rotated from eachother in a linked list and then compute everything relationally from there.

It made coding the game logic very easy, but the UI is borderline painful to work on because the absolute orientation of the triangles is stored nowhere.

I could (and probably should) throw it out and start over, but then I'd have to rewrite all the game logic.

[Treach]

Yeah! Lets punish everyone so no one can bot! You must be a SE employee....

[ellohwell]

I would like something like this for finished items and stuff to go on wards.

But I would like crafting progression to be based around a different system (maybe questing?) because a complex system like this might be fun but might also be boring.

[Misteyes]

Yeah! Lets punish everyone so no one can bot! You must be a SE employee....

Actually, making a system that's fun was my first priority. I fail to see how this minigame is a "punishment," especially when there's the option to hasty hand everything.

[Treach]

Actually, making a system that's fun was my first priority. I fail to see how this minigame is a "punishment," especially when there's the option to hasty hand everything.

I'm sure you worked really hard on that wall of text, cause it's rather large but, why complicate something that shouldn't even be complicated.

They should just go with the world of warcraft system, just make it slower if they want I guess. No reason to just be mean and make it painful.

[Baxter]

i'd personally like to see this current system be refined. It is fine the way it is, but i read somewhere Yoshi will make it so there are no breaks and simple, easy recipes without any chance of HQ will be a quick process while they will retain a mini game for the harder, and timely processes of making HQs. The system is fine, if they adjusted it to where it was skill instead of all randomness.