"Overhaul" please stop.

[Nandrolone]

What would be your suggestion to make crafting more difficult, and not just annoying? I ask this because in the past, the devs make things "difficult" by incorporating the RNG. You spoke of quality touches being 100% now, but a complaint throughout the duration of crafting is how 'drive-a-railroad spike-down-my-throat-instead plz' quality progress was at anything less than 100%. The groans about how anything less than 100% is basically 50%, and I would also have to agree how frustrating it was.

A suggestion I have brought up were crafts that only allow a certain number of steps. However, this is essentially the same as nerfing your CP, and it still suffers from not being able to perpetuate the difficulty. They can incorporate a system that doesn't really allow a player to get to 100% HQ and still complete the craft, but then those aforementioned gripes will return in heavy force.

I honestly don't know. But I admit that innovation is not my forte. I really don't have a problem with the current crafting system though. From a perspective of seeking challenge, I never thought about it being much more than an disassemble/reassemble puzzle. Once you figure it out, then the challenge goes away. A lot of players don't even want that though, and they want the puzzle solved for them instead of using the brain muscles.

I don't think the devs are being unreasonable. In fact, I think they could probably start being a little bit more unreasonable to improve the quality of the game.

My suggestion would be to make it skill based somehow. My idea though, would be making touch actions only available during certain crafting conditions. For example, you can only use Delicate synthesis or prudent touch during a Good/Excellent. That’ll essentially make macros not optimal and make manual crafting a thing. It’ll also show who really enjoys crafting and who really doesn’t. But that would involve RNG.

Anything in a game that is of value or importance, usually involves RNG or putting in a ton of time and effort. For example, in resident evil 2 remake, to get infinite ammo guns, you need to beat the story on Hard Mode during a very short time frame. Any longer, and you don’t unlock it. Things that are easy in games, or involve little to no RNG, are essentially useless or not worth many people’s time to pursue. I just don’t see any way around that personally.

[Gemina]

My suggestion would be to make it skill based somehow. My idea though, would be making touch actions only available during certain crafting conditions. For example, you can only use Delicate synthesis or prudent touch during a Good/Excellent. That’ll essentially make macros not optimal and make manual crafting a thing. It’ll also show who really enjoys crafting and who really doesn’t. But that would involve RNG.

Anything in a game that is of value or importance, usually involves RNG or putting in a ton of time and effort. For example, in resident evil 2 remake, to get infinite ammo guns, you need to beat the story on Hard Mode during a very short time frame. Any longer, and you don’t unlock it. Things that are easy in games, or involve little to no RNG, are essentially useless or not worth many people’s time to pursue. I just don’t see any way around that personally.

Certain touches and synthesis already behave that way, and it's the direction the devs want to go so players cannot rely on macros. While I am not implying that RNG should be stripped of crafting and gathering, I am still curious how to perpetuate any kind of a challenge without it.

I thought of a time frame scenario as well, wherein you only have a certain amount of time to complete a synthesis, or make a decision before a consequence such as loss to durability. I think I might have even suggested something similar to TT, where there are certain restrictions based on the region you are in, but I feel none of these are all that good to sustain engaging gameplay with crafting and gathering.

Perhaps challenge doesn't need to be perpetuated so much as it just needs to keep a player thinking. But if it's not PvE or PvP, I'm not sure how much of a skill requirement you can put in there before most players lose interest altogether. There is a large portion of the playerbase that sees crafting/gathering as a pass time, and what they do to get away from such requirements while still grinding away towards a goal. That's not to say there shouldn't be some form of challenge, otherwise we risk more "just make it one button" arguments.