Crafting in General - OMG Fix It

[Enthy]

I don't like how much animation there is per crafting action.. It takes up so much time. Would be nice if SE cut out at least one swing/stitch/cut per animation. Also, an "abort synth" option would be nice.You know, for those synths you know you're going to fail but always seem to drag out till 90%.

[Zephy]

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.

With point one, I'm in full agreement. A lot of abilities seem like they'd be great to use just based off of their description. Peregrine in another thread stated that almost any abilities that alter 'rates' whether it's success, quality gained, or durability loss are at best negligibly useful. Maker's Muse, Fulfillment, Masterpiece etc.. all of them seem like they would be really great. But in practice they don't seem to have much of an impact. Those skill are all freebies, with basically laughable requirements in the current iteration of the game, r10 in one craft, that's like 2 or 3 locals? The best skills like Hand of the Gods and Perfection they require some sort of work. Granted there a lot of abilities that require ranks and marks that are still useless and I would like to see them do something rather than nothing.

For your second point, I'm going to respectfully disagree. As I've personally seen the right gear really make the difference in synthesis under a variety of circumstances. I'll explain below how I think they come into play.

From the Lodestone Q&A on Synthesis, we know that specific recipes have certain statistical requirements. Why doesn't this seem immediately evident? Because, as best as I can figure the requirements are 'soft' meaning that there is no barrier to attempting the synthesis as long as you meet the necessary rank requirement. At which point you can attempt the recipe in your underwear and with a weathered tool if you'd like. But if you're not within a certain threshold for a particular statistic you're going to have a heck of a time overcoming a certain amount of failures.

To me this became very evident on my ALC when I tried to break clusters at r38. It was absolutely miserable until I played with my stats through gear, and upped my base Control and started eatting Seafood Dishes, and at that point the synthesis became much more manageable. My success rate swung 20% in my favor, and has consistently stayed that way.

So what I think is happening is that most recipes just utilise these soft thresholds for meting out a certain swing in success rates. And people tend to think that stacking Craftsmanship, or M. Craftsmanship should linearly increase the success rate all the way to 100%. Well no, that's not how it works for STR or INT to damage, and people accept that, why then should the game use that approach for crafting? (One exception is for HQing I definitely stack Control as much as I can, while still meeting what I percieve to be the threshold for Craftsmanship or M. Craftsmanship for the recipe, because Control does seem to delay the appearance of sparks).

Also as your parenthetical note there, I don't believe that STR (or any of the 6 primary stats) has anything at all to do with success rates. In another article on Lodestone the devs stated that the effect of statistics on crafting was limited to HQ rates.

[zzapp]

OK, everyone's clearly entitled to their own opinions here, and that's fine with me.

I have excellent crafting gear, I eat tuna mith's, I get, at minimum, T1 support. I spent the 12K guild marks on Perfection which is, in fact, broken, and I did the same for Flawlessness, which as far as I can tell is more broken than Perfection.

If you're happy with the random aspect of the crafting code, congratulations, enjoy the game. I for one, am of the simple opinion that the higher my rank, the easier a particular recipe should be. That doesn't mean my failure rate should GROW from 10% to 20% after SP'g 3 ranks on this same recipe.

Peace out.

[Zephy]

Your insistance that it's arbitrarily random doesn't make it so, there is still an element of chance, yes but the crafting system as it exists also rewards knowing it's in's and out's and preparing yourself above and beyond what you personally consider to be adequate.

[zzapp]

Suppose you're out and about and you come upon a mob that cons orange, and you engage and get your ass handed to you. A few ranks later, you come upon this same mob and it cons yellow, so you engage, but, once again, it defeats you. Another couple of ranks and this mob now cons green, so you engage, and to your surprise, defeat again.. and so on thru blue con. There's something wrong with this picture, right? You would expect the mob would be easier to defeat with + rank.

Now, I tell you you can beat this mob if you get such and such abilities from other jobs, and with this gear and weapon setup, etc., but it doesn't nullify the fact that something clearly isn't right here.

In effect, this is exactly what I'm experiencing with crafting. When yew half masks are essentially failing at the same rate @ R42 as they were @ R36, or walnut masks are failing @ R45 at a 20% rate, vs. the 10% I experienced @ R43-44, something clearly isn't right here either. Maybe it's moon phase, or moon element, or day element, or direction I'm facing - I have no idea.

Zephy, you're clearly very bright and articulate, and I'm sure more than game worthy. It's obvious you've gone out of your way to try to provide insight in this regard, and for that I thank you. However, your reading comprehension is lacking, at least in this thread. You said this a few posts ago:

And no, I'm not missing your point. I understand it, you just want the failure rate to be lower across the board.

Show me once in my various posts in this thread where I advocate this? As a matter of fact, I dont care if SE makes synths at or above level more difficult. Further, it's rather unfair of you to imply or suggest that I haven't taken the time or expended the effort to get guild mark crafting abilities, when you have no idea which abilities I have. I honestly don't mind if you throw darts in my direction, but make sure you're aiming at the correct target.

In a nutshell, this is all I said:

1. The higher my crafting rank the better my success ratio should be, thru time, for a given recipe.

2. Most abilities are not working correctly, and many are totally broken. I don't care if it's a rank 10 laugher ability - it should do what it says, or change the damn in-game description. Perfection - "Ensures success of next action." I've had this out and out fail 3 times in row ><

3. In my opinion, the RNG in the crafting code is way way too >, and is directly related to point #1. You may not agree with this, and I'm fine with that. I fully understand that there need be some range of randomness in the code. Otherwise, crafting would be more boring than it already is.

Simply put, there should be some real and recognizeable relationship between rank skill and abilities, as it relates to any given recipe. Nothing more, nothing less.

Regards.

[Unowned]

Every battle/gathering class has consistency. Add consistency to crafting in all aspects. Problem solved

[Peregrine]

Ok so the walnut mask is described as a R50 synth. As the mechanic bluntly states, "There's your problem."

You're going to have a >20% fail rate even at 46. You will start to notice your "improving curve of difficulty" at about rank 47. Every synth level before you you've noticed no improvement in making them because they are too high for you still.

Carpentry is lucky to have a R50 synth grind. That means that your R47-R57 will be relatively easy.

[Reika]

So you agree he can be totally naked and still have a 20% fail rate?

[Zephy]

Zephy, you're clearly very bright and articulate, and I'm sure more than game worthy. It's obvious you've gone out of your way to try to provide insight in this regard, and for that I thank you. However, your reading comprehension is lacking, at least in this thread.
Regards.

Yeah I guess I wasn't seeing what you were specifically saying needed to be changed. I wouldn't mind rank having a more pronounced effect on success as long as they don't alter the overall success rates as they exist too much. As it stands there is very little change in recipe difficulty until you get to be within 2 or 3 ranks of the recipe in question, then it starts easing up. That could stand to be a bit more spread out.

[Peregrine]

So you agree he can be totally naked and still have a 20% fail rate?

To be honest I don't really want to know how little gear actually affects outcome of these synths. If you find out just let me blissfully think my gear does something. I do know that level absolutely dominates outcome.