Thread: A summary of my impression on the new skills and tips for 5.2 crafting

Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

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Originally Posted by LostCroisanf

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Originally Posted by Nandrolone

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I am in the process of drafting a formal letter to request for better challenges and better rewards. I believe the better reward part is also long-overdue. The letter will be highly structured, and the points will be made simple/clear but with elaboration. The letter will contain details, but not overly drowned in them. It will also be in the appropriate tone of a formal request.

Originally Posted by Sabora_Makingai

2570 crafts/2508 control, 622 cp after food
...
...
This macro will 100% HQ 70 durability items with no HQ mats. Youre welcome.

... I don't know what to say, as I am unsure what the point of your post was.
Are you trying to teach me how to craft or to make macros, sir?
Or are you trying to show off that your stats are higher than mine?
Or are you suggesting that your macro is the solution to the problems that we're discussing in this thread?

Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

One thing I would like addressed is what Caimie pulled off. I have held off over melding until now so that I could see the stat requirements for 3 star. Minute I saw them I felt something was way off they seem far to low, Caimie post here just confrims that stat requirements need to go up. Full 2 star with guarnteed slots filled with at least the first overmeld slot filled on armor/accessories should be what it takes too reach the min.requirements to craft 3 star. To be blunt what Caimie accomplished should never have been possible. I will go out and say as a causal crafter putting Materia in guaranteed slots along with the first overmeld slot is plenty do able for any causal. For causals who prepare ahead even the second slot is do able without breaking the bank or massive grinding.

Now that you can exract materia without losing gear if further reinforces that if you have done crafting long enough there is no excuse for not having the materia ready. Stock pile early stock Pile often is the name of the game. Not going to comment on craftingskills as I am figuring crap out again after I just got a grasp on it.

I actually somewhat disagree with this. I don't think setting higher stats requirement would help. It forces people to get into better gear for sure, but why should people be forced into better gear by the stats requirement? People should be forced into better gear because the recipe is too hard to be done with lower gear!

Take raiding as an example, why should the game set a minimum gear ilevel requirement? Well, that's because raiding is a group activity, and if someone is way undergeared, it'll create problems for the PUG party on the DF. But let's say if raiding is a solo activity... what if someone can solo Bahamut with i90 gear? Why do you have to force him/her into i120??? No point for that. If he/she wants the challenge, i90 should be allowed to fight Bahamut! But Bahamut itself should be made hard enough so that people in i90 would die!

Nevertheless, if we decide to SEPARATE challenging crafting from battle gear recipes that should be accessed by easy crafting, then this is not an issue. The game can use "minimum stats" to directly control who has access to the easy recipes, and make sure people are wearing certain gear sets before they can access those recipes. The crafting of those recipes can then remain relatively easy (macroable), and it won't hurt. Meanwhile, the challenging crafting would not have such gear restriction, but the recipes should be so hard that anyone with low gear sets would definitely fail. This should be controlled by the difficulty of the content, not by ilevel or min stats.

Originally Posted by Rath

This is no different than crafting back in Heavenward when I got bored and quit.

Em... yeah, so this is not quite ok... I don't want you to feel that way, and quit again!

Originally Posted by NanaWiloh

No its not ok or reasonable. Even Caimie should have found making such a jump difficult. This is why Caimie and Nan are disappointed, I am a causal if I am stunned that it gave a hardcore crafter no challenge.

Yes, that is why I was disappointed.

Originally Posted by Cleanse

It would probably be a good idea to wait until after the next update with the 'Expert Recipes' and rewards before creating another megathread.

Good:
- I like the new consolidated toolkit we have, everything makes sense and works well together.
- Rotations are shorter and thus macros aren't needed, which adds to the safety of lag breaking a craft.

Unsure:
- The Extract Materia ability might cause materia prices to tank, we'll see, maybe that was intended.

They could have probably removed Rapid Synthesis. Anyone found a use for it while leveling?

I am unsure about the wait. I have done this "waiting before the next big update" for over 5 years now. I think I should just spit it out, voice the opinion, make the request. I highly doubt this Expert Recipes will help. From my personal experience, every time they come up with something like that, it's surely something creative, new and can be fun too, but they NEVER truly satisfy our hunger for more challenging recipes or better rewards.

I agree with you with the "Good"s. I like them too.
Extract Materia is bound to lower materia prices. The prices HAD already fallen. It's already happening.
Both Rapid Syn and Hasty Touch are 'dead'. No one would use them unless they are like level 10-ish when they have no other choices. If these skills are to be remained in the game, they need to buff up the success rate a little bit. Perhaps by around 20%, making them 70% success.

One very important aspect to be added in the request is to define "more challenging recipes". We need to be specific and very careful. We really hate RNG when it's involving our success rate on touches. No one wants to go back to Hasty Touches spam, and pray to RNG god for successful touches. We are done with that. But RNG CAN and SHOULD still be used to make recipes harder and more interesting. Please allow me to define harder recipes first and then explain the RNG part.

In my humble opinion, the definition of "harder recipes" or "more challenging recipes" can encompass one or more of the following:
- Has so much progress/quality to fill such that our current CP pool appears insufficient.
- Even a fully buffed Byregot's Blessing under IQ11 is insufficient to fill the quality bar to 100%.
- HQ raw mats having very low availability, and do not contribute much to the quality bar.

So you may ask, so how the HELL do we HQ it then? Well, many of our crafting actions make use of CONDITIONS, and this is one of the key factors that should allow skillful crafters to prevail. Of course, this is also RNG-based, but this is vastly different from having the 80%-success rate touches that we relied on in the past. Keep in mind, players almost always find a way to do things! As long as the failure of HQ-ing the item is not very costly, players will continue to try until they succeed. Being flexible and being capable of using the right skills at the right moment should be (and should have always been) the fun part in crafting.

The definition of harder recipes is extremely important, as many players or perhaps even some developers wrongly believed that RNG = harder recipes. That is NOT the case. You do need some RNG to make things harder and interesting, but being too hardcore with RNG (such as those on touches success rate) only ruins the game. Whereas, appropriate RNG can prompt players to make appropriate judgements on the spot and make the game much more interesting and challenging.

In summary, a harder recipe is a recipe that requires a player to make the best use of RNG-based conditions in order to effectively HQ it (hence, it is not macroable).

I am very specific with this, because if we are to request something, we need to know EXACTLY what we want.

i personally think that if your at base stats then you should not be able to hq the item without a fully buffed byregots if even then.

it should probably require near full or full hq mats to stand a chance, if it was like that the crafts would be harder until you have better stats,
even when you have better stats it should require hq mats to some extent maybe just 1 to guarantee it or at 0 hq your run the rng gambit on good / excellent to get that final hq item.

i think with a setup like that it would add more value to the nq and hq mats as right now hq mats have no additional value and just take more time to make. if they separated there mb value a bit then the markets would open up as some people would just craft mats to sell and others will trust in their gear and under standing to make sure they get a hq final product.

although SE did say that they wanted raid ready gear to be easier to make if i remember correctly when they introduced it under the pattern we currently have. maybe they should add harder crafts along side the raid ready gear that are the real new * crafts.

one thing is for certain people will complain regardless of what SE does as they will either complain they are to hard or that because they cant afford the fully melded crafted set that they will feel they are locked out of content they should have access too. so long as people expect all content to be accessible and easy for them to do SE are restricted in what they can achieve.

That doesnt even acknowledge the fact that more happy people is better than a few disgruntled players who arent getting the hard content they want, more happy players = more subs after all.

I'm all for the expert crafts being hard and requiring highly melded crafted gear to even attempt them and i hope thats what SE does but as youve all said the crafting game has got nothing but easier since ARR.

Caimie I am sorry I am not the best with explanations. But your reply to me on stats/gear, etc. Is right on point for what I was trying to get at which is someone wearing i430 should not be able to HQ i480 and the difficulty needs to be adjust in whatever way to fix it. Thank you for doing the letter on all this as well

Originally Posted by chidarake

i personally think that if your at base stats then you should not be able to hq the item without a fully buffed byregots if even then.

it should probably require near full or full hq mats to stand a chance, if it was like that the crafts would be harder until you have better stats,
even when you have better stats it should require hq mats to some extent maybe just 1 to guarantee it or at 0 hq your run the rng gambit on good / excellent to get that final hq item.

i think with a setup like that it would add more value to the nq and hq mats as right now hq mats have no additional value and just take more time to make. if they separated there mb value a bit then the markets would open up as some people would just craft mats to sell and others will trust in their gear and under standing to make sure they get a hq final product.

although SE did say that they wanted raid ready gear to be easier to make if i remember correctly when they introduced it under the pattern we currently have. maybe they should add harder crafts along side the raid ready gear that are the real new * crafts.

one thing is for certain people will complain regardless of what SE does as they will either complain they are to hard or that because they cant afford the fully melded crafted set that they will feel they are locked out of content they should have access too. so long as people expect all content to be accessible and easy for them to do SE are restricted in what they can achieve.

That doesnt even acknowledge the fact that more happy people is better than a few disgruntled players who arent getting the hard content they want, more happy players = more subs after all.

I'm all for the expert crafts being hard and requiring highly melded crafted gear to even attempt them and i hope thats what SE does but as youve all said the crafting game has got nothing but easier since ARR.

I hope on patch 5.3 we see the crafting difficulty go Expert>3 star crafting gear>3 star crafted battle gear. I have goals like staring Nandrolone in the eyes with agreement, Caimie has goals like not being bored and then there are those who wanted to haunt the MB like some kind of stalker!!

Originally Posted by Caimie_Tsukino

One very important aspect to be added in the request is to define "more challenging recipes". We need to be specific and very careful. We really hate RNG when it's involving our success rate on touches. No one wants to go back to Hasty Touches spam, and pray to RNG god for successful touches. We are done with that. But RNG CAN and SHOULD still be used to make recipes harder and more interesting. Please allow me to define harder recipes first and then explain the RNG part.

In my humble opinion, the definition of "harder recipes" or "more challenging recipes" can encompass one or more of the following:
- Has so much progress/quality to fill such that our current CP pool appears insufficient.
- Even a fully buffed Byregot's Blessing under IQ11 is insufficient to fill the quality bar to 100%.
- HQ raw mats having very low availability, and do not contribute much to the quality bar.

So you may ask, so how the HELL do we HQ it then? Well, many of our crafting actions make use of CONDITIONS, and this is one of the key factors that should allow skillful crafters to prevail. Of course, this is also RNG-based, but this is vastly different from having the 80%-success rate touches that we relied on in the past. Keep in mind, players almost always find a way to do things! As long as the failure of HQ-ing the item is not very costly, players will continue to try until they succeed. Being flexible and being capable of using the right skills at the right moment should be (and should have always been) the fun part in crafting.

The definition of harder recipes is extremely important, as many players or perhaps even some developers wrongly believed that RNG = harder recipes. That is NOT the case. You do need some RNG to make things harder and interesting, but being too hardcore with RNG (such as those on touches success rate) only ruins the game. Whereas, appropriate RNG can prompt players to make appropriate judgements on the spot and make the game much more interesting and challenging.

In summary, a harder recipe is a recipe that requires a player to make the best use of RNG-based conditions in order to effectively HQ it (hence, it is not macroable).

I am very specific with this, because if we are to request something, we need to know EXACTLY what we want.

My only concern with difficulty is SE understanding that what someone like me calls hard is not what someone like you Caimie calls hard. Which is why find it important that both sides causal(star recipes) and hardcore(expert recipes) have their own endgame for crafting. At the moment they are leaning to far to one side again as you stated..