Crafting in General - OMG Fix It

[zzapp]

My periodic rant.. lol

My first 10 synths tonight, walnut mask @ R45 (i.e. - been making these now for 3 ranks, quality gear, and T1 support)

First 10 synths, 11 unstables. Only 2 synths did not go unstable, which means 3 went unstable twice ><

This is a joke

[Jinko]

^ something that is even more bizarre is how you can be making something with pure earth shards and it will go unstable on a different element.

Shouldn't it in theory make sense that it would go unstable on earth only ?

[Raim]

As it stands, you are correct. Crafting and to even more extreme extent gathering, are too RNG to be heavily influenced by attributes. I notice practically no change after reallocating into the right stats for Botany, did 50 harvests as a test, and the results were not even noticeably better or easier to accomplish. I can also reallocate points for a specific craft, but it still can and has resulted in MORE failures.

[zzapp]

Frankly, the more I craft, the more convinced I am that gear, support, food, attributes, and especially abilities are all rather irrelavant as it relates to crafting success. This is very disturbing, since this game is so crafting concentric. I am also convinced that since the last patch, crafting was, indeed, ninja nerfed. I swear almost every synth goes unstable, often twice, and sometimes up to 3 times, and more often than not, chaotic, for no good reason.

Specific to walnut masks, while I haven't kept absolute stats, a reasonable statement of failure for ranks 42 thru 44 is roughly 10% - now, at rank 45, somewhere between 15%-20%. How can this be?

While the development team is off working on battle, which I agree is badly needed, the bigger part of the game is being ignored. I understand there needs to be some degree of RNG (not even sure I understand what that stands for, but I assume it relates to randomness), but this crap shoot code needs to be cleaned up so there is a reasonable relationship between skills, gear, support, food, and abilities, and crafting results and success, or I'm simply going to find another game to play. Crafting is boring, tedious, repetitive enough, without the added influence of sh*t just blowing up for no good reason ><

[zzapp]

Sadly, this just gets worse and worse. Trying to grind out the last few synths for 46 today, I failed 5/10 synth. Everything continues to blow up and every synth goes unstable. It's sad when progress on a success is 6%.

As big a FF fan as I am, I really don't think I can take this anymore. It would take a team of experts to come up with a game more lame than this.

[Peregrine]

I usually see carps weavers and tanners sp'ing off really unreasonably high level synths which may be the real problem. Like 400-600 a synth. You can't do that in other crafts. On GS and BS, you can expect instability on 75% of synths on a skillup that's R40+ unless it gives you under 260 sp. That's just how it is. Instabilities become very common on high-level grinding synths. Our sweetspot for reliability and SP gain is at about 310 sp per synth, because you COUNT on instability happening and pushing through it.

I don't see a problem with skillup reliability. Only problems I see in crafting are that HQ materials aren't given the power and respect they deserve, and that there's no PvE or party content for it.

[Reika]

I usually see carps weavers and tanners sp'ing off really unreasonably high level synths which may be the real problem. Like 400-600 a synth. You can't do that in other crafts. On GS and BS, you can expect instability on 75% of synths on a skillup that's R40+ unless it gives you under 260 sp. That's just how it is. Instabilities become very common on high-level grinding synths. Our sweetspot for reliability and SP gain is at about 310 sp per synth, because you COUNT on instability happening and pushing through it.

I don't see a problem with skillup reliability. Only problems I see in crafting are that HQ materials aren't given the power and respect they deserve, and that there's no PvE or party content for it.

And dont forget BS have to use way more materials than carp and tanner once they reach 45+. Iron longsowrd blades... terrible. ; ;

[zzapp]

I usually see carps weavers and tanners sp'ing off really unreasonably high level synths which may be the real problem. Like 400-600 a synth. You can't do that in other crafts. On GS and BS, you can expect instability on 75% of synths on a skillup that's R40+ unless it gives you under 260 sp. That's just how it is. Instabilities become very common on high-level grinding synths. Our sweetspot for reliability and SP gain is at about 310 sp per synth, because you COUNT on instability happening and pushing through it.

I don't see a problem with skillup reliability. Only problems I see in crafting are that HQ materials aren't given the power and respect they deserve, and that there's no PvE or party content for it.

I appreciate what you're saying here, but you're missing my point to a very large degree. I waited on yew half masks until R36 for this very reason, and I ranked up on these thru R42. Many begin SP'g on these at much earlier ranks. The point is, this synth was equally as miserable @ R42 as it was @ R36. I waited until R43 for walnut masks, others start earlier. From R42-44 I experienced approximately 10% failure rate. Thru R45 my failure rate was near 20%. No matter how you view this, this just isn't right. Nor are broken abilities being more than a placebo.

Since this game is so heavily crafting concentric, it becomes imperative that skills vs. success/failure are appropriately relational - not some kindergarden crap shoot of chance. This should apply, equally to all crafts, not favoring crp wvr lth over GS or BS.

[Zephy]

I agree with Peregrine, for pretty much any recipe ranked Mid-40's you're going to see unstables, and commonly 2 of them in the course of the synth. It's not an issue, because the game affords the necessary abilities to either deal with or soldier through unstables.

You're saying 10% or 20% failure is unacceptable, okay well you can with some work get that down to 3-5% on comparably difficult syntheses. It just takes a bit of dedication in getting the ranks and marks needed to qualify for and purchase the right abilities. Yes, there are abilities that actually have a significant impact on your synthesis success rate, and no they're not freebies given by just ranking up, and no, not every class gets them.

For one, there's Hand of the Gods which you can qualify for after doing the r36 ALC quest. It is not some sort of panacea, but it definitely improve your success rate. It affords a guaranteed 0 durability loss for 4 rounds on finished goods (i.e. Half-masks), and 3 rounds on materials. The sole exception is on chaotics that happen while under HotG, these will still reduce your durability, but! at a minuscule ammount when compared to a standard chaotic (I'm talking like 4-7 durability which is a joke).

Secondly if you know you're due for a particular kind of unstable for the recipe in question, you can prepare before hand by having the proper elemental brand. How do you know? Well if you've made the recipe a bunch of times before you know, trust me. For example, on Brown Toadskin Vamps (which I SPed on from r40-47 TAN) the most common unstables were Ice and to a lesser degree Wind. So every time I went to grind TAN I'd equip Brand of Ice and Brand of Wind. You use em reactively, they have a proactive use, sure, but you can't predict when an unstable will happen so it's useless to use them that way. By reactively I mean that when you're in the middle of the unstable you use the Brand and then you 'Wait'. I have yet to not have an unstable resolve by the 3rd 'Wait' when using the correct Brand, and more often then not the 1st or 2nd 'Wait' takes care of it.

Those are the two primary things I use for grinding out a craft through the 40's. If you take the time to acquire them, you'll be able to get the sort of success rate you seem to desire.

And no, I'm not missing your point. I understand it, you just want the failure rate to be lower across the board. Well I disagree, 10-20% seems fine to me, and for the people who take the time to acquire the right set of tools a lower failure rate is definitely achievable.

[Reika]

The problems i see are:

1. There are tons of OTHER +Success rate skills that quite frankly don't do anything.
2. Crafting gear stats have a rather minuscule effect on success rates, even tho in one of the "Ask The Devs" explanations, Higher Craft, mg craft, and control for both, should increase chance of success and progress gain. if at 117 craftmanship and 93 control my #*&$ keeps exploding violently on me, something is wrong.

I was making a r28 recipie at r46 (Iron Labrys) with those stats, and the random-you-fail code kept creeping up on me. I shouldn't see 4 violent explosions in a row being 18 ranks higher than the recipe, and get dropped down to 12 durability barely creating it.

(And yes, I had Guild smith forge + Craftmanship food (Deviled Eggs) +157 Str)

Tell me thats not jacked up.