What bothers you most about the current synthesis system?

[TheVedis]

"Challenge" doesn't mean difficult. A Challenge is something to aspire to. With crafting, for me, it being able to Create the Most powerful items I can. For others its cornering the market on a specific type of item. The Mini-Game is not the Challenge and it never will be. They cannot make it hard. They cannot make it in-depth. They cannot make it realistic. They tried that and people raged. They can't make it in to tetris, it would take to long to make anything; and guess what? That was the first thing everyone complained about.

the bottom line is alot of people just dont like the concept of crafting at all
they look at other games(every other game at that) and how its all auto crafting, and they cant think of it any other way

these people are all lost causes when it comes to crafting ideas, and unfortunately they are also the ones who suggest the most changes

[Kiote]

If they're going to make it a new system, it shouldn't be a puzzle. People who like puzzles play puzzle games. FFXIV is not a puzzle game. I'm certain there are plenty of players who would find the puzzle system annoying and time consuming.

Something they could do instead, is make the system more akin to combat, where you have a couple bars to gauge (Perhaps durability being similar to your HP and progress being the craft's HP, in this analogy), and several actions to interact with these gauges, whether slowing durability loss, increasing progress gain, restoring durability, and other such factors. This would make crafting more engaging, while at the same time not completely changing the genre.

The sad truth is, that is exactly what the system is right now. They just have not revamped the Skill for the new system yet.

People just don't recognize the system by your description because right now, it looks like lists. If they put all the skills on the action bar, made Qual, Dur and Progress into HP bar graphic, we would have exactly what you just described.

[Haibel]

I for one would have loved to see a level by quest system over a exp type system for crafting.

something like how you rank up in GC would have been good. But there would have been a lot of
work that needed to be done for that system to be in place and they obviously were no where near
that point when they released the game. It is what it is.

[Molly_Millions]

"Challenge" doesn't mean difficult. A Challenge is something to aspire to. With crafting, for me, it being able to Create the Most powerful items I can. For others its cornering the market on a specific type of item. The Mini-Game is not the Challenge and it never will be. They cannot make it hard. They cannot make it in-depth. They cannot make it realistic. They tried that and people raged. They can't make it in to tetris, it would take to long to make anything; and guess what? That was the first thing everyone complained about.

I digress:

chal·lenge
   [chal-inj] Show IPA noun, verb, -lenged, -leng·ing, adjective, noun

1. a call or summons to engage in any contest, as of skill, strength, etc.
2. something that by its nature or character serves as a call to battle, contest, special effort, etc.: Space exploration offers a challenge to humankind.
3. a call to fight, as a battle, a duel, etc.
4. a demand to explain, justify, etc.: a challenge to the treasurer to itemize expenditures.
5. difficulty in a job or undertaking that is stimulating to one engaged in it.

[HiirNoivl]

Something they could do instead, is make the system more akin to combat, where you

Kick the crap out of something? (*hopeful look*)

have a couple bars to gauge (Perhaps durability being similar to your HP and progress being the craft's HP, in this analogy), and several actions to interact with these gauges, whether slowing durability loss, increasing progress gain, restoring durability, and other such factors. This would make crafting more engaging, while at the same time not completely changing the genre.

W-wait... that sounds almost exactly like what crafting is now...

[Estellios]

For once I agree with Kiote. The changes to the crafting system in 1.21 made it a lot better as it's a lot more beneficial for you to pay attention. Spamming standard gives you safe but crappy XP, spamming Careful carries a lot of risk and has diminishing returns in time spent vs. XP awarded. Rapid synth is actually useful as it saves durability.

IMO I think we just need the "selecting materials" part of the synth removed (which will be taken care of in 2.0) and the abilities to be better and conform to the new system. We should have to pick our abilities based on what we want to do while crafting, and not just throw on Preserve, Perfection, and Hand of the Gods and fill up whatever slots with random crap or just leave them blank.

As some examples:

• Hasty hand should always succeed but give reduced XP, and only be possible with synths of same or lesser level than you.
• "Brand of X" abilities should become passive, selectable traits that either just outright prevent destabilization of that element or at least prevent it becoming chaotic. More complicated synths use more crystal types so it's a choice between more crafting abilities or preventing more elements from going haywire.
• An ability that is the reverse of Preserve, that makes the next few actions have multicolor orbs
• An ability that makes Careful Synthesis more successful (never fail?) but completely prevents progress while it is active.
• An ability that makes Standard synthesis more successful but eliminates Quality gains

Basically just give us a bunch of really useful but situational abilities that actually feel like they make a difference and will actually compete for spots on our crafting action bars, instead of 30 variations of a vague "makes your next action more likely to succeed".

[Molly_Millions]

Something they could do instead, is make the system more akin to combat, where you have a couple bars to gauge (Perhaps durability being similar to your HP and progress being the craft's HP, in this analogy), and several actions to interact with these gauges, whether slowing durability loss, increasing progress gain, restoring durability, and other such factors. This would make crafting more engaging, while at the same time not completely changing the genre.

I might go for something like that if they spiced it up a bit more somehow. I'm not married to the idea of a puzzle game. As I said earlier, there are a million different ways they could improve crafting. increasing XP gains just alleviates the pain, there is SOOOOO much more they could do instead.

[HiirNoivl]

Here's what I'd like to see in Crafting:

Get rid of the generic orb: I wanna see what I'm crafting. we can keep the bar, but I want to see the gradual completion, graphically represented on the screen. You've done it with food (where I can see the representation of the food I'm eating.) Do it with crafting.

Make me think: Okay we don't have to have a puzzle, but simple math (Hm... 14% dura... better to a Standard) is just as brainless as you can get. The people who don't want to have to think are the ones holding this system back.

Keep the HQ the way it is: If you want to HQ you can, if you don't care, you won't get inventory killing HQ by accident. This is good.

Music, effects and sounds: Music is elevator.... spice it up a little bit. If you succeed for Standard, Rapid, or Careful it's all the same sound and graphic! Give me some graphical Congratulations if I succeed in each different way.

Any of these suggestions would improve crafting.

TLDR: At least give me something to Look at when I'm crafting. Geez.

[turtlemancan]

I'm a new player and I've got mixed feelings about the crafting system. The act of mining/blacksmithing/etc is fun enough and I like the whole guessing game aspect to it, but I feel like I'm wasting my time when I'm doing crafting leve quests. I don't understand the point of making me run for 10 minutes to a mining node when there's no challenge involved in doing it. It's just needlessly time consuming.

[Griss]

The crafting "game"... let's not call it a game. The word "game' implies fun and enjoyment. I won't even use the word "activity" because you don't have to "actively" be engaged in the game to do it successfully.

The Crafting... "thing that people do", is so boring I feel like I'm wasting my time in the game and I should log out and do something else.

It shall be hence forth named the Mildly Interactive Item Generation System. Or Miigs, at least the gathering mini-game is an actual game. The Miigs on the other hand will make your brain liquify and sluff out of your ear.