The Joy of Crafting

[Hachiko]

I was thinking about how crafting feels like messing with an orb rigged with explosives. Then it hit me, crafting is just like playing this

If only crafting werent 3x as random as minesweeper.

To the OP:

There are two fundamental problems with Crafting: First and foremost is the effort to reward ratio. Yes, you can put a lot more effort into a synth and have a higher chance of success, and maybe even a chance of HQing. The problem is that from ranks 1-45 you primarily want to get EXP, and the fastest way to get EXP is to simply spam a semi easy synth with support for 300 exp while doing other things like watching netflix.

To put it in perspective. If I am doing DoH and chopping trees, the most efficient way to gather is to know where to chop for a given item, which comes with experience and a little bit of research, and then to hit those spots where items come up. If I just spam enter while gathering I will get NOTHING. Thus, gathering has it right (while not perfect), because the "easiest" thing to do gives the least (almost no) reward, while playing knowing what to do gives much more rewards. While on the other hand the fastest way to exp as a DoH is to spam enter, because spending 2-3 minutes per synth, with a 20-30% chance to fail on a high 600 exp synth is just plain inefficient compared to completing 2-3 250 exp synths on auto pilot in 2-3 minutes.

The other fundamental problem is the randomness. And the biggest problem here is that the randomness is non-mitigatable. That is to say, even if you outlevel the recipe, even if you equip and use all your skills, even if you have support, you might STILL fail for absolutely no reason even on a recipe at or below your level, and it will be COMPLETELY out of your hands.

When synthing feels more like simply making a series of dice rolls rather than strategic moves, there's hardly any reason people would want to pay attention. The randomness is so crippling because it takes the control from the player. Which further turns it into a game as "get as many tries in per hour" rather than "spend as much time as possible to try to make the best / highest quality items.

If there were some serious changes made to the system now. Particularly normalizing the success rates of the 3 synth modes, adding additional effects, and making success or failure depend on whether you choose the right types of synths rather than hoping you don't get an unlucky destabilization -> chaotic, it would be much improved.

That would also need to follow up with a realistic way to add more quality, in addition to the effect of quality being higher. Getting 100 quality on an item should net more than a bonus 10% exp, because it generally takes twice as long to do a synth at no bonus quality.

And ultimately synthing needs to just give more experience across the board. 150-600 per item should be changed to give less experience but giving it on each synth, rather than on each item. this would promote maximizing the number of synths on an item, which would make the most rewarding way to craft to be to put the most effort into each item. It would level your more quickly and more efficiently.