Synthesis/Crafting Is a Pain

[SuzakuCMX]

You heard me...at first I thought synthesis/crafting in this game was new and innovative...and it is, but there are things that REALLY make it a pain to be a DoH in this game.

1. Crafting Materials - Most recipes that make equipment require one or more materials from another DoH or from a vendor (IE: Distilled water from a vendor/alchemist, copper buckles from Armorers who in turn need copper nuggets from Smiths, table salt from a vendor/Alchemist)...the result is an extremely complex system that requires a huge timesink if you are to make each ingredient yourself, constant running to and from vendors, or having to spend a lot of time in the market ward...outside of guildleves, crafting is a complete pain! Please change it so that all materials for a certain DoH are in the same spot (Ex: Put all materials a Culinarian would require on the same vendor!) or make it so that crafting stuff doesn't take so many materials (Ex: a hempen tunic requires a Hempen Tunic Front [which in turn needs Undyed Hempen Cloth {which needs 3 Hempen Yarn per stack of 3}, Hempen Yarn, and a Copper Buckle], a Hempen Tunic Back [which needs an Undyed Hempen Cloth {again, 3 Hempen Yarn per stack of 3} and a Hempen Yarn], a cotton hood [which needs a Cotton Yarn and 2x Undyed Cotton Cloth {which needs 3 Cotton Yarn per stack of 3}], and a Buffalo Leather Strap [which needs Buffalo Leather from Leatherworking for a stack of 12 {which requires a Buffalo Hide and Walnut Chips for a stack of 4...Buffalo Hide vends for 24,000 gil} which vends for 8000 gil per and only in Gridania]....that is a ridiculous amount of materials for a single item, and its a rank one weaving recipe. It also requires materials from Weaving, Leatherworking, Armorers, and DoL classes or an obscene amount of gil to buy the materials from vendors (not even all of them can be bought)....not sure on Market prices but it's such a pain to deal with the Market Wards.
2. Synthesis Process - Another thing I thought was innovative but soon began to hate. The synthesis process is indeed innovative...but there is nothing in-game that gives you a clear explanation of the process; it took me 3 days to actually find an explanation of what the different colors meant. A lot of the synthesis process is based on luck in the earlier levels (as you get progressively higher, you learn skills to increase the chance of success of different types of synthesis and can increase your attributes more easily). On top of this, if you fail the synthesis process, you lose all the materials that you worked so hard in Point 1 to obtain...
3. Shards - I don't exactly see the purpose of shards except for a mini-economy. It's a gimp to DoH because they have to buy shards from other players or are forced to rely on switching between DoH and gathering/fighting classes to farm their own shards...at least most of the lower level crafting materials can be bought from vendors. DoL, DoW, and DoM classes are completely self-reliant outside of repairs...but DoH have to rely on DoL for crafting materials (unless they want to level solely off of Local Guildleves) and DoW/DoM/DoL for shards.

So...this is a list of complaints, now come solutions! I would also like to ask other players to also contribute solutions or tweaks to the system that would help make DoH more independent and not such a pain to use.

1. Lessen the amount of materials required to craft....most things, or at least make 99% of the materials required to craft recipes come from the same class. The remaining 1% should only be for higher end recipes because higher leveled players can farm more easily and can probably afford to buy materials from other classes/craft the materials themselves.
2. Release more information about the Synthesis process/tweak it. It takes a little bit too long to make things (it takes me about a whole minute to make something if I don't get 100% success on Standard/Rapid Synthesis the whole time). Combined with problem #1, it takes a long freakin' time to make any item worth anything if you're going to synthesize all the materials yourself...especially because it takes the same amount of progress to make Hempen Yarn as it does to synthesize the entire Tunic once all the materials are gathered...maybe make it so things way lower than your level are automatically synthesized when you synthesize? Also, there isn't any hard information on the system...right now the information is "White = greatest chance of synthesis success, yellow = okay chance, red = less chance but greater results when succeeding, alternating = low chance of success..." That doesn't really say much...for all we know, white could just be a base of 50% success chance (until someone actually gets a loooot of testing with it). We need some hard percentages since it's mostly guesswork right now. Something good to add would be like a "Success Bar" right below the Progress Bar that tells you your chances of success. This sorta is holding your hand through crafting but you shouldn't have to mostly rely on your luck and guesswork for the process.
3. Remove shards or create vendors that sell them for cheap (such as 3-5gil per). Not much explanation required here, but this way DoH don't have to rely on switching to gathering/fighting classes or buying from players and it also makes a nice gil sink for solely DoH classes.
4. Don't have failures destroy ALL of the materials. This would be a huge step forward. This is mostly a problem because of how much work it is to obtain all the materials for synthesis, so if Suggestion #1 happens, this wouldn't be such a huge problem. Anyways, the suggestion for this is to have only the lowest level materials be destroyed and not materials from other classes...so if you fail to make a Hempen Tunic, only the Tunic Back, Cotton Hood, and Hempen Yarn would be destroyed.

Well, sorry for the wall of text...it's late now so I'll be going. No tl;dr either, sorry I might add one tomorrow if I remember.

[zaviermhigo]

While I do agree that it sucks to have to get items from other crafting classes, this is the idea at the basis of their economy, its just not working the way its supposed to.

[Nevrath]

Hi,

I do like the crafting system over all.
The loss of material, well im not that high but i feel there should be atleast a little punishment for trying to craft something 4 levels higher and not suceeding. Loosing it all ... well not even FF11 made you loose them all most times.

I dont think the progress is too slow on standart syntesis since it gets quite fast if you make stuff you outlevel by a certain ammount. The 3 syntesys types are nice even tho i never ever use rapid, it seemes not to work well anyways. They could make it suceed more the quality loss on it already is makeing it totaly not viable for me.

The thing i agree with you is all the tons of stuff i need to craft a gear piece...i just started to buy stuff like rivets and so on since they are usually realy cheap but the fact that i need shoulder guards from leatherworker for so many of the gears i can make as Weaver. I dont want to level Leatherworker i dont wanna play a class which wears Leather but those are rarely available.
The Leather Straps are ok or Leather at all thats quite available. Same with Rivets etc, not so with Bronze Plates.

I kind of gave up on Carpenter since i found out to make my own Weapons completely i need Carpenter and high level of Alchemie...
So if i want to make my own gear for my Magics i need:
Weaver
Leatherworker
Carpenter
Alchemist
Goldsmithing

Bummer....

On the other hand there wouldnt be much of a trade if everyone could craft everything themselfe.
Maybe the problem is that too many people wanna make it all themselfe and dont sell the parts needed for other crafts. hehe

Also annoying, were i have to agree again, is the running arround to gather the stuff needed:

Hm ok i need X lets check my current Market Wards in Gridania.
Hm ok there is none what do i do now? Ok i have some anima left i will try Uld'ah.
Hm ok its not up there either, damn, will i apwend another 3 anima to check Limsa? Eh no im already below 50.
Tabs out checks FF14 Zam, reads up.Ok X is not so hard to make i can make it myself. But shoot it Material Y i need for X and cant do myself cos im 12 levels below that Skill in Craft Z is also not available here.
Checks Uld'ah Market Wards again. Oh no Y is not available.
Hm ok lets Teleport to Gridania maybe im lucky.
Running to Gridania Market Wards again.
Ok its not available here too.
Will i spend another 3 anima to check my very low chances that it is available in Limsa? And another 3 to get back to Gridania again...
No.
Result: 15 min time gone, nothing achieved 6 anima gone for nothing. *sigh*

Thats a little sad since i realy do like that quality/durability/progress crafting its fun to me. Watching out for that glow glow on ur syntesis board, biting on the table plate if im at 8 durability and 95% progress... if the loss wouldnt hurt so much cos i made a world journey to get the materials...;-)

Wall of Text end. Sorry for mistakes english is a foreign language to me. :3

[Xeonerable]

The only thing that annoys me the most about crafting is element instability. >_<
I wish they would remove it. @_@

[SuzakuCMX]

While I do agree that it sucks to have to get items from other crafting classes, this is the idea at the basis of their economy, its just not working the way its supposed to.

I don't mind that you get materials from other classes, I mind that a lot of recipes require it and furthermore, recipes require materials from other recipes. In the end the root of the problem is how much synthesizing/crafting you have to do to make one finished product. It's a little too realistic for me.

[Lienn]

I don't mind that you get materials from other classes, I mind that a lot of recipes require it and furthermore, recipes require materials from other recipes. In the end the root of the problem is how much synthesizing/crafting you have to do to make one finished product. It's a little too realistic for me.

That's exactly what i loved about these recipes. Its very nice you being able to guess recipes by looking the equipment ^^ pretty much everything you put in a synth appears in the equipment ^^

[kyuubi]

Seems like challenges in the game to a lot of forum posters are considered "problems", and everyone wants these "problems" fixed. I don't agree, I like challenging gameplay

[Smokie23]

Seems like challenges in the game to a lot of forum posters are considered "problems", and everyone wants these "problems" fixed. I don't agree, I like challenging gameplay

I'm with you on this one. How easy to you want this game? Every patch released is making this game easier and is seriously making me turn my interests towards other games...and this would be the second time, leaving XIV. They don't fix XIV soon...I feel it will die a slow death. Might just go back to XI and play that again.
I don't know why players want everything handed to them. Lazy I guess. What fun is anything when its so simple and easy. I would go play WoW if I wanted a easy, cheesy game.

[SuzakuCMX]

I'm with you on this one. How easy to you want this game? Every patch released is making this game easier and is seriously making me turn my interests towards other games...and this would be the second time, leaving XIV. They don't fix XIV soon...I feel it will die a slow death. Might just go back to XI and play that again.
I don't know why players want everything handed to them. Lazy I guess. What fun is anything when its so simple and easy. I would go play WoW if I wanted a easy, cheesy game.

It's fun when skill is involved, but not when A: Recipes are randomly handed out, B: You can't view recipes you discover after a while, C: It takes 30 minutes or longer to craft a basic item, D: You have to go through multiple professions or through the Wards to do it, and E: You have to start from the beginning if you fail a single synthesis process.

It isn't challenging gameplay I dislike...it's challenging gameplay with high risk-low reward, numerous unexplained factors that can't all be tested by players, and arbitrary costs put into it (Shards). I appreciate shards because they sell easily, are easy to obtain, and help you start out...but you could remove them from the game because they do nothing but add another material to crafting.

SE also needs to branch out towards casual players...that was the whole reason they implemented the fatigue system. The only way they're going to financially recover from the September release flop and bad press is by making the game easy to get into, innovative, and appealing to the casual market. With WoW, Guild Wars, Rift, etc. they can't really compete unless they appeal to the casual market...when FFXI was released, there wasn't much competition for the MMORPG market, but now there's an overabundance of MMOs and most of them are crap (but there are some good ones).

TLDR; Just because you like "hardcore" gameplay does not mean it's healthy for the game to keep arbitrarily complex systems in the game as they are with no tweaks.

[Nevrath]

I wont exactly consider it challenging to teleport arround and run arround.
I dont have a Problem with the speed of the craft itself, thats fine. I also dont think its bad that i need stuffz from other crafts. Just the fact that getting shoulder guards can become an odysee is an issue for me.
Also its not "challenging" to google up reciepts....its just an uneccesary, hm how to express it, sticking point hits it probably. XD
Also, how is it challenging to play something you dont like? Thats not a challenge, thats annoying at best. A challenge would be if i REALY would need to watch the color of the synt orb to not fail the craft instead of mindlessly hitting "standart syntesis". ;-)