Crafting "Practice Dummies"

[Thatusernameistaken]

I like the idea but too bad it will never see the light of day. I file this wonderful idea under the tackle box.
Two expansion on and lv50 gathering nodes still do not have any type of log representation to help people remember when to get them. DoH/L has always been an afterthought for this game.
The most recent in-game timer that was implemented is a POS too.

Have to disagree that DoH/L are afterthoughts in this game. FFXIV easily has the most in-depth, immersive, and unique crafting systems of any MMO ever made. That said, this is simply a QoL suggestion to make the best crafting system out there even more better.

[Kabooa]

Have to disagree that DoH/L are afterthoughts in this game. FFXIV easily has the most in-depth, immersive, and unique crafting systems of any MMO ever made. That said, this is simply a QoL suggestion to make the best crafting system out there even more better.

*that you played.

[Thatusernameistaken]

*that you played.

It's true that it's a subjective matter, but it's a pretty widely shared opinion that FFXIV has the best crafting system in all of MMOs.

[Gemina]

While I won't argue the usefulness of such a feature, the anxiety attributed to the potential loss of time, gil, and hard earned mats is kind of what endgame crafting is about. It's why Reclaim will never ever be at a 100% return rate, because the devs want that element of consequence there. The actual possibility of failure. And the only true way to penalize a crafter is the loss of mats and shards/crystals/clusters. It's what hits us in the gut, and tells us we might want to reconsider our approach.

So no. I couldn't disagree more with this request.

[Thatusernameistaken]

While I won't argue the usefulness of such a feature, the anxiety attributed to the potential loss of time, gil, and hard earned mats is kind of what endgame crafting is about. It's why Reclaim will never ever be at a 100% return rate, because the devs want that element of consequence there. The actual possibility of failure. And the only true way to penalize a crafter is the loss of mats and shards/crystals/clusters. It's what hits us in the gut, and tells us we might want to reconsider our approach.

So no. I couldn't disagree more with this request.

A valid point. I suppose it is part of the reason I spend so much time crafting in this game and have such an appreciation for it.

[PangTong]

While I won't argue the usefulness of such a feature, the anxiety attributed to the potential loss of time, gil, and hard earned mats is kind of what endgame crafting is about. It's why Reclaim will never ever be at a 100% return rate, because the devs want that element of consequence there. The actual possibility of failure. And the only true way to penalize a crafter is the loss of mats and shards/crystals/clusters. It's what hits us in the gut, and tells us we might want to reconsider our approach.

But in practice everyone just uses simulators to avoid this. I'm definitely not going to risk hundreds of thousands of gil or hours of time spent gathering up materials on the possibility that I'll fail just because "that's what crafting is all about". If anything it just scares people away from trying to progress crafting to begin with. The possibility of failure still exists in forms like, not being attentive while crafting, or taking a risk on a HQ chance under 100%, or needing condition procs to guarantee success due to low stats.

[Liam_Harper]

While I won't argue the usefulness of such a feature, the anxiety attributed to the potential loss of time, gil, and hard earned mats is kind of what endgame crafting is about. It's why Reclaim will never ever be at a 100% return rate, because the devs want that element of consequence there. The actual possibility of failure. And the only true way to penalize a crafter is the loss of mats and shards/crystals/clusters. It's what hits us in the gut, and tells us we might want to reconsider our approach.

I would bet gil that the number of successful endgame crafters who have never used a sim or pre-made macro is sub-1%. You simply don't risk huge amounts of gil and time throwing out random rotations on gear for fun and hope it works. If that's what crafting is intended to be, it's missed the mark and I'm glad it has.

Crafting still has that loss-anxiety, you have it while leveling where you do experiment on the fly. You have it if you macro and there's the possibility a poor will land on Brygots. You have it if you manual craft and forget any detail on food/cross class skills or misclick anything. Every endgame crafter has botched expensive crafts on their journey.

For me, endgame crafting is taking all the data available and working out the absolute optimal rotations for my purpose. Working with the stats you have to figure out the most cheap, efficient, reliable rotation using every ability available. It's what makes it fun for me and sims are what make that possible.

[MN_14]

You shouldn’t need a sim for you to reliably design a viable approach, especially as SB has been designed to be more intuitive as you don’t need to consider statistics anymore when determining skill priority. With enough practice (on materials, etc), you’ll get to the point where you can get a very good idea of what you need to do just by looking at the required quality and progress requirements. Yes, even if the game had crafts that gave you progress/quality requirements from a more or less random pool, you should be able to ace them (designers should not include requirements that cannot be done with the min required stats). If you’re unable to effectively design on the fly, can you say you have truly mastered crafting?

Case in point: When the i320 crafter gear was first released (first time we saw 28.5k quality crafts and our stats were far worse than what we had for 3* and 4*!), a lot of players found them challenging to 100% using full HQ mats, never-mind starting with i290 gear and all NQ mats. If you understood the crafting process, all NQ runs should not have been difficult. You would already have known that your Byregot’s blessing finisher gave you 11k quality from previous 2* crafts and could easily determine what you needed to do to come up with the other 17.5k. The trick was simply to get your IQ stacks as high as possible before firing off a barrage of at least 9 ingenuity 2 buffed touches; around 25% of the time, you could manage 13 ingen 2 buffed touches. You also got enough CP for an average of 16 touches. You don’t need a simulator to figure that out.

I managed 86% on my first blind run and moved my results to 90-100% (100% around 60% of the time but I never did optimize it before upgrading) with some refinements. Imagine if the game forced you to craft from all NQ with stats capped at the i290 gear…..

The truth is that those crafts were very easy to HQ even at min requirements and all NQ mats if you had a solid grasp of crafting mechanics but very hard to HQ if you didn’t. They would have served as an excellent and fair skill check if the game forced you to craft under those conditions. But given the way the game is balanced (lots of HQ mats, major over-gearing), most players will never learn, which is a shame.

Back in ARR, sims were counterproductive to your learning as the idea was (and still is if you truly want to master crafting) to design a crafting methodology (on the fly prioritization, optimization, adjustments to changes in the situation etc). If the i320s were considered difficult at 0 starting quality and i290 gear, it’s no wonder crafters did poorly on ARR’s master 2 tokens. That’s what was satisfying about ARR crafting. The balance created divisions in player proficiency and you were rewarded with excellent results only if you took the time to truly master the system.

[Liam_Harper]

You shouldn’t need a sim for you to reliably design a viable approach, especially as SB has been designed to be more intuitive as you don’t need to consider statistics anymore when determining skill priority. With enough practice (on materials, etc), you’ll get to the point where you can get a very good idea of what you need to do just by looking at the required quality and progress requirements. Yes, even if the game had crafts that gave you progress/quality requirements from a more or less random pool, you should be able to ace them (designers should not include requirements that cannot be done with the min required stats). If you’re unable to effectively design on the fly, can you say you have truly mastered crafting?

Not sure what you mean by this.

I can design "viable" rotations on the fly just fine. I'm at the stage where I do all my gear crafting manual and just pull the rotation out of my head and 100% hq, I know exactly what Brygots will give me at 9, 10 and 11 stacks Inner Quiet on each craft, how much CP I need to leave for a finisher, whether Innovation is better than that good proc or not and so on. If I misclick something or forget a specialist stone I can improvise with high success rate. So I'm not sure where the idea that sims are counter-productive to learning comes from. All the information I've had available has improved my learning. It's like studying a subject with books and research compared to randomly poking at it until something makes sense.

SB crafting is fairly accessible, but it's certainly got complexity if you want to go beyond viable and create the most efficient, economical rotations possible. Almost every ability has a use somewhere in some endgame rotation. Sure you can 60% HQ a normal piece with Makers Mark and a bit of sense and the same old rotation, but if you want to figure out how to HQ a non-specialist piece 100% reliably without markers mark, with cheap food, with your own given stats, you need to research it. And the second is far more valuable to a serious crafter.

[MN_14]

To be clear, I’m not against the idea of creating efficient rotations when you have already mastered the system and the game allows you to gear for it. SB allows you to over-gear for even the latest crafts making everything very macro friendly from all NQ mats. Unfortunately, this also means that anyone can copy someone’s macro and craft as effectively.

I believe that there is an over-reliance on the web-based simulator as the be all and end all learning tool. It’s not a great tool if you have to craft under conditions where you really had to utilize procs for good results/freehand craft (unless you incorporate a million what if scenarios). Hence, that’s the reason why macros gave subpar results back in ARR (unless you consider reclaiming 1/3 of the time to be acceptable…). That said, a crafter’s striking dummy would be highly useful as a learning tool for freehand crafting and I’d vote for it.

In the case of the i320s as I mentioned previously, at the min requirements, no matter how much you tweak a rotation using the simulator, you’re not going to get the greatest results because you’re not incorporating all of the CP required to HQ it effectively (earned through procs, etc). Effective static rotations only became possible once you obtained the new gear. If a crafter relied on the simulator and the game forced you to craft the latest tiered crafts under similar conditions, a crafter who relied on simulators would never learn it correctly. ARR master 2 tokens and 4* was kind of like that to a certain extent.

SB is tuned toward mass market crafts. While I think there is a place for both mass market and high-end crafts (where you have to freehand them for high HQ rates), if the majority of players copy a macro, there probably won’t be high end crafts again other than ones that require rare drops (high end only due to scarcity).

In the end, I think it boils down to opinion too. I don’t find creating efficient rotations when way above the min requirements to be very satisfying. Yes, you could produce crafts a bit more efficiently than the next crafter’s rotation/macro, but the difference isn’t great. On my server right now, some crafts are being sold at a 30% profit only (based on raw mat prices) and supply still exceeds demand. If there were also crafts with similar difficulty to the i320 Doh/Dol gear on release and forced you to craft from all NQ and min requirements, I think you’ll find that you’ll quickly outproduce the player who hasn’t learned how to freehand them. It’s what happened back in ARR and even HW.

You also can’t treat anything under 100% as a failure. Especially, in ARR where it was impossible to guarantee an HQ, a solid crafting methodology works fine. Even with my i320 example, if it’s impossible to guarantee an HQ but you’re getting 100% sixty percent of the time, 90-95%, 35% of the time, and 5% eighty percent of the time, at the end of the day, it’s an overall 95% yield and you’ll on average only get 1 NQ per 19 HQs. It’s not going to make a dent especially as crafters (majority in ARR and HW from my experience although that could be server dependent), will either be producing very slowly or producing NQ after NQ.

What I find fun is a craft where it’s impossible to guarantee 100% and you have to constantly think. There also has to be logic and strategy behind your approach (it can’t be random or simply hammering out x number of touches). I was quite surprised that although the i320 2* crafter gear was easy even with all NQs and i290 gear, I found them more fun than anything in HW due to the vast pool of abilities at your disposal. I think interesting crafts can be created using the SB system, but we generally won’t see them.