Crafting feels arbitrary

[Blitzgon]

Just like the title suggests, the current crafting system is tedious and should be resolved in a quality of life update. Right now if you are geared with most of the newest gear available then crafting old items level 54 and below can be done with very little effort. a little higher than that may require food to macro finish but still is quite easy. Beyond that things may require a specific rotation and a few HQ materials to finish HQ.

Its all fine initially but after gearing, melding, and and eating the appropriate food its honestly just becomes arbitrary to do the crafting process itself. its always the same rotation with the current highest tier crafts requiring either a bit of luck or several HQ mats to finish HQ.

So I propose a Auto-Craft system be put in place to cut out the middle man of doing lower tier crafts. It could be a system where you place a set arrangement of abilities to play out in a quick fashion for a number of crafts for anything below the current highest tier of crafts. this would help quickly complete crafts that are easy or quickly make the mats for higher level crafts.

Another Idea for this is instead of arranging abilities to play out in quick succession is to have it be stat based. once your stats are high enough then you automatically can HQ a craft. If you use HQ mats then the requirements on stats would be lowered the more you use.

This may just be ranting and most will probably disagree with the idea of a auto-craft system but I'm tired of the whole crafting mini game as a whole and I'm sure there are those that would agree that after making 100 of so-and-so that you'd think we would be able to just skip the whole process.

[Atoli]

We HAVE an auto-craft system already though o.O
As soon as you have made an item once, you can automatically let the game craft up to 99 of the same item for you (if you have the materials for that many). You get less exp and the HQ chance is fairly low, but I think that's just fair, to have some kind of drawback if you want to be lazy/timeefficient vs actually making everything yourself.

[Blitzgon]

@Atoli You are very correct, we do have a system already in place for completing crafts quickly. the only thing is though is for 50 and beyond you may need to HQ otherwise is almost completely worthless. what I'm suggesting is some sort of way to complete crafts quickly that are still extremely simple HQ. Even in higher crafts it is very boring doing the same rotations over and over, so some sort of automatic system would be very nice. Perhaps expanding the macros to beyond 16 lines or being able to chain macros would be nice as well. Either way I would want to see a way to relive the arbitrary middle man of actually wasting time to craft mats and then the craft itself.

[MicahZerrshia]

You shouldn't be able to HQ lvl 50+ items with quick synth. Under, maybe if your control is high enough, but why do you really don't need to outside making stacks for the mb since there is really no need to have hq cobalt ingots in stacks of 99 anymore as you can easily just hq the 1 or 2 you need in 4 quick clicks...if that. If its for profit, you are basically just making leveling crafting more expensive since the mb would literally be filled with just hq and that doesn't always even itself out. Under 50 items usually takes what 3 to 6 button taps to hq already which is super fast. Just not click and walk away like nq.

It's super easy to write a macro to hq 50+ items and single tap a button as you watch tv. Sure it takes a lil more time but again if you want a stack of 99 to sell, take the time to do it.

HQ is Higher in Quality because you took an extra few seconds to make it, whether by macro or not. DoH was designed specifically to be a job just like any mage or melee, which also have their monotonous rotation with little variation and luck thrown into the mix. Not like ESO or GW2 whose crafting system is just click and done. This would be like just asking to make all hits outside bosses crit at 100% with auto attacking being highest dps or all gathering hq outside timed nodes.

I'm a crafter too, I get it, but if I want HQ items it doesn't bother me to much to just make em.

Why have HQ at all at that point?

[MN_14]

How arbitrary crafting is depends on the method that you're using to HQ your crafts. Once you graduate from rotation based crafting, you'll find that a non-rotation free form process is considerably more varied and that you really don't require any HQ intermediate materials. It's a mini-game of min/maxing on the fly and probability manipulation.

When crafting 4* final crafts from all NQ materials, I find that I can get the following:

- 100% around 70% of the time
- 91-94% round 20% of the time
- 84% or less around 10% of the time

This works out to an effective HQ yield of ~95% without even needing to HQ a single thing besides the final craft.

Most of the 91-94% results can also be turned into 100% just by HQing the level 50 3* materials giving you a few hundred starting quality, which is convenient if you're not mass producing a large batch.

If the developers introduced auto HQ crafts, there wouldn't be any benefit to learning the system properly. This isn't like in ARR where it was not only harder to free form your synth (lower base cp, no maker's mark, etc) but where this kind of method was required to reliably HQ the master book 2 tokens or 4* crafted materials. True, master recipe book 2s could be obtained through rotations but it was more or less a brute force method where you were heavily reliant on the use of reclaim, almost absolutely had to bait for good/excellent procs at the end for >30%, and had to throw tons of gil at it. Learning the system meant you could obtain the best recipes fairly easily/economically while it was RNG hell/super expensive for someone who didn't learn it.

The HW crafting balance is rotation friendly and heavily simplified but the price is that you'll have to spend more time HQing intermediate materials. Speed/efficiency is the benefit to learning the RNG system.

[Luinne]

this has the stink of a WoW-mentality post. "I need this done as fast as possible, with as little effort as possible, for the MAX amount of potential as possible... and i want it now!"

The one and only reason i see this being a "necessity" is if you are wanting to craft HQ items to give/sell to others for quest turn-ins so they can plevel their crafting. There's less than zero reasons that are viable to mass produce HQ L50+ items, except that reason i just stated... or a WoW-fugee simply not wanting to do any more work than absolutely necessary. Which is it?

[Niwashi]

the only thing is though is for 50 and beyond you may need to HQ otherwise is almost completely worthless

Well, then you should be doing it manually. Quick synth is for when you don't care about quality. Even the finest craftsmen in the world aren't going to produce exceptionally fine products by just running on auto pilot and not paying attention to what they're doing. They might still be able to produce passable products that way, but that's what our normal quality results are. They're perfectly usable. They just don't represent having put real effort into making them. (I'm actually surprised that there's any chance of a HQ result from Quick Synth.)

Low-level stuff: By the time you're way above their level, you don't need simple materials to be HQ any more. Go ahead and Quick Synth. A couple clicks and wait a bit can get you however many you want. They'll be Normal Quality, as they should be when you really haven't earned anything better.

Intermediate stuff: If you want it HQ, and it's simple enough to do so, you can macro it. A couple clicks per item, one to start the craft, and another to start the macro, and you can get High Quality items really simply. But that HQ is going to cost you doing them one at a time. (This is actually how I've been making most of my gil lately.)

High Level stuff: If a simple macro-able pattern can't reliably HQ something, and you need to watch conditions and adjust your skills to suit, then doing that fully manually is the whole point of our crafting system. Show your skill in knowing how best to adapt to circumstances or look for a gambler's thrill by trying until RNG favors you. Either way, this is the part where there's the most real gameplay involved in being a Disciple of the Hand.

(Of course, what constitutes low, intermediate, or high level is relative to your own level and stats at the time.)

It seems like the full range is fairly well covered, between not having to do anything or having a complete game involved in making something.