Crafting in General - OMG Fix It

[Slateboard]

Ok, I just found this topic and I'm new, etc. I've been crafting for a bit and this is what I've found to be consistently successful -

http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/6...dsynthtips.png

I don't know if it works with Bold/Rapid Synthesis, or how much of an impact the gap between your rank and the item's rank will have. But standard synthesis with items equal or lower than my rank have come out quite fine.

Maybe it's old, I don't know. But I'll share it anyway just in case.

[Coglin]

I am just fine with the fact that there is a codependancy between crafting classes BUT, and I do mean BUT, if a player is making a level 24 item, any and all parts should should also be level 24.

[Joe_Cool]

I think the materia crafting thing should be another craft job. In order for it to be affective though, it is paired with the other craft jobs already in the game.

Meaning you can't do it solo but could be paired with doing it with, lets say....leatherworker. On the recipes you can make on leatherworker, you can combine it with your rank on materia to enchant armor, tool, etc. based on what stat the player wants on it. And the higher rank you are in materia, the more stats/abilities you can enchant to that said armor, tool, etc.

I hope I did atleast a decent job in explaining what I mean.

[Micronowski]

I really dislike the crafting system in its current state. If you're not dealing with the rage inducing randomness of it, you're dealing with the boring monotonous grinding involved. A crafting mini-game is a great idea I think, but can you even consider pressing ONE button over and over again for hours upon end until you reach your desired level a mini-game?

If SE absolutely refuses to reduce the exp needed to level, then at LEAST make the damn mini-game interesting. Fire element goes unstable then a bomb spawns and tries to kill me? Awesome. Earth goes unstable and titan spawns to punch me in the face? Great. Add *anything* to change things up.

Also, Don't force me to run to a hundred different towns just to turn in the stupid quest. It's fine if I have to go to horizon to turn in a quest, maybe I'm going there anyways to level, but why do I have to go to drybone too?!

And lastly, Please add more level-appropriate leve's. I hate going to get my dose of crafting leve's only to find out they only have level 20's available and no 25's. I'm leveling 2 crafts and I've had days when I've only been able to get ONE level 25 leve and the rest are level 20's.

/end rant

[Amineri]

I really dislike the crafting system in its current state. If you're not dealing with the rage inducing randomness of it, you're dealing with the boring monotonous grinding involved. A crafting mini-game is a great idea I think, but can you even consider pressing ONE button over and over again for hours upon end until you reach your desired level a mini-game?

If SE absolutely refuses to reduce the exp needed to level, then at LEAST make the damn mini-game interesting. Fire element goes unstable then a bomb spawns and tries to kill me? Awesome. Earth goes unstable and titan spawns to punch me in the face? Great. Add *anything* to change things up.

Also, Don't force me to run to a hundred different towns just to turn in the stupid quest. It's fine if I have to go to horizon to turn in a quest, maybe I'm going there anyways to level, but why do I have to go to drybone too?!

And lastly, Please add more level-appropriate leve's. I hate going to get my dose of crafting leve's only to find out they only have level 20's available and no 25's. I'm leveling 2 crafts and I've had days when I've only been able to get ONE level 25 leve and the rest are level 20's.

/end rant

The crafting system in 14 is a step forward from most, but I agree that there is still a ways to go. The combat system had many, many successful (and unsuccessful) MMOs plus the Final Fantasy (and general JRPG) series as examples of how to build a combat system. Unfortunately that experiment turned out poorly.

Given the lack of good examples, the crafting (and gathering) systems are pretty good. Kind of like when the first (J)RPG games were coming out the combat systems were often rather clunky and unrewarding. Does this mean I'm all starry-eyed and satisfied with the system as it is? Heck no.

Currently the emphasis is on revamping the battle system. This is where Matsui-san and the other system designers and algorithm developers are putting their focus. Fair enough ~~ I'll concede that a majority of players prefer fighting over crafting / gathering.

However, after the battle system has been reworked, and Matsui-san is spending fewer hours per week tweaking it, I hope that the battle team (YES, THE BATTLE TEAM) can cross over and help expand upon the crafting and gathering mechanics.

The way to make the crafting and gathering systems fun is to make them more interactive, more engaging, more challenging. I'd like to quote from Matsui-san's post, once again:

Fostering Skillful Play
Creating a battle system that fosters skillful play.
The above is, in a sentence, the rationale behind the coming battle changes. Not exactly the punchiest catchphrase around, but perhaps there’s kindly a soul out there who could word it better. */poke Yoshi-P*

To elaborate, we are aiming to address issues such as the following:
Victories coming with little reliance on skillful play.
Lack of information needed for skillful play.
No sense of accomplishment even with skillful play.
In light of the above, our objective is to implement a battle system that rewards player effort and innovation in such areas as equipment, hunting grounds, and party structure.

Lastly, in conceiving these changes, we have kept one fact close to heart: simply making enemies stronger does not equate to an environment that fosters and rewards skillful play.

Now I'm going to modify it, with the changes in bold, to what I would like to see the reform concept for crafting/gathering:

Fostering Skillful Play
Creating a crafting/gathering system that fosters skillful play.
The above is, in a sentence, the rationale behind the coming crafting/gathering changes. Not exactly the punchiest catchphrase around, but perhaps there’s kindly a soul out there who could word it better. */poke Yoshi-P*

To elaborate, we are aiming to address issues such as the following:
Successful craft/gathers coming with little reliance on skillful play.
Lack of information needed for skillful play.
No sense of accomplishment even with skillful play.
In light of the above, our objective is to implement a craft/gather system that rewards player effort and innovation in such areas as equipment, gathering areas / crafting material, and party structure.

Lastly, in conceiving these changes, we have kept one fact close to heart: simply making results highly randomized does not equate to an environment that fosters and rewards skillful play.

If Matsui-san and the battle team were to release the above objective for the crafting / gathering systems, I would be a happy kitten!

[Physic]

i dont know how one can fail a craft 24 levels under them with the proper books, and with guild training, i have never even come close to failing such a synth, unless i was just straight gambling the whole time, and didnt get the guild buff, which in all honesty i will probably succeed with.

Far as making crafting more interesting, i had this discussion in another thread, and i think a lot of people dont want it to be more interactive or complex, they just want to get the levels, andmake the stuff with as little problems as possible. Keep in mind most people who are mad in this thread are mad because of fails.

[Radaghast]

Any mini game to make crafting more interesting will just end up being the same boring repetitiveness that we have right now, simply because doing the same thing 1000000 times is going to get old no matter what you do. Same thing grinding the same mobs (or levs) over and over. It gets old. The difference is other games have other things to do inbetween the tedium to distract from how boring it can be. This game has nothing like that.

They're in the right direction doing things like daily craft quests, if only they were higher than rank 10. Probably once that's fleshed out you could get 10-20k a day into a rank. Anything to break up the tedium of leveling.

[Peregrine]

It's come to a point where the system would be alright if there was a WoW autoleveller.
It takes 10,000 iron nuggets a level on blacksmithing towards the middle of the home stretch. None of that is quality content, it is all poor gameplay. Make it automated.

At least then the botters don't have an advantage any more.

[Lionix]

It takes 10,000 iron nuggets a level on blacksmithing towards the middle of the home stretch.

Holy freakin' CRAP, is this true?! 10,000 nuggets for a level?! Please tell me it's just that it's because it was a horrible grinding option or something!

Even with my whole "Eh, I don't grind to get to the end, I just enjoy the ride and "live it" until the end just shows up all of a sudden" playstyle, that 10,000 synths (assuming they are all successes, right?) is just... outstanding...

[Radaghast]

I think he meant it takes that much to get through those levels, not one single level. 2,500 synths of iron ornamental heads would be well over 500k sp.

Still I guess those that rode the doblyn era got lucky. I pretty much got fed silver/brass to the point I barely had to mine them. Got miner to 32ish just mining iron for asm and bsm exclusively.