Crafting takes too long and the mini-game is boring

[SuzakuCMX]

How about any recipe more than 8-10 ranks below you are instantly synthesized? And then you can do touch-up afterwards.

[EmeraldHill]

well in terms of speed, you could just gamble on hasty hands, less exp, but saves time

Hasty hands should be for low level mats where the quality doesn't bother you and it already gives no exp.

[Nuinn]

What's off-putting to me regarding crafting and gathering is the speed in general and still too many windows to click trough, as far as I'm concerned.
But mostly, speed.... there's still some lag between button presses and execution and the animations last too long. I don't have an issue with the actual minigame aspect of it just the.... speed x___x

Also, why can't we chose whether we want to continue crafting an item like during local leves, provided we have the necessary mats in our inventory. Even with hasty hands it's annoying to click recipe button each time, and then click confirm, and then craft >_>

[Slateboard]

I feel that the system needs to be revamped. I'm not sure how, but I'd love to spend less time overall. Less time going through menus, etc to select recipes and whatnot. Less time in the crafting process as well. If I'm going to invest a lot of time into a task, I'd like it to not consume so much time between attempts.

Though, to be honest, I find gathering to be more in need of a speed boost. It just seems so slow doing the minigame to mine or chop trees.

[Xenor]

There's plenty skill in crafting if you want to pop out +2 and +3s. But no matter what the system is you'll never add any skill to simple skill up synths.

I agree some changes can be made to the user interface to make it faster such as that continue leaves have being applied to every synth, but leave the actual synthing alone.

You can already do fast synths of low rank items, that's what hasty hand is for. Most of the time spent in a hasty hand synth is preparing it, so add that continue button and you'll be synthing low rank stuff at insane speeds. I think the ability itself could be improved, such as when the hasty hand action fails. It shouldn't sometimes immediately destroy the item.

[Reika]

There's plenty skill in crafting if you want to pop out +2 and +3s. But no matter what the system is you'll never add any skill to simple skill up synths.

I agree some changes can be made to the user interface to make it faster such as that continue leaves have being applied to every synth, but leave the actual synthing alone.

You can already do fast synths of low rank items, that's what hasty hand is for. Most of the time spent in a hasty hand synth is preparing it, so add that continue button and you'll be synthing low rank stuff at insane speeds. I think the ability itself could be improved, such as when the hasty hand action fails. It shouldn't sometimes immediately destroy the item.

Then why did I just HQ3 an alch recipie, making 8 fire crystals instead of 2, using no skills and standard synth? Also I have 0 int. A little over 200 qual, since it was a +2 Miter shell.

Meanwhile, I get NQ after getting over 500 qual on iron nuggets while actually trying to HQ. 126 Mnd.

Does spamming enter take skill?

Bottom line is, the reward for taking your time to raise the quality of a synthesis is not present. It is all random as hell. RNG. Which goes back to the OP's point: Crafting takes too long, is boring, and involves no skill.

[Tiraelina]

If by skill you mean ranking up several DoH for their abilities and by ranking up I mean watching Hulu/Netflix/TV and spamming enter.

Sure, it takes skill.

[Xenor]

Then why did I just HQ3 an alch recipie, making 8 fire crystals instead of 2, using no skills and standard synth? Also I have 0 int. A little over 200 qual, since it was a +2 Miter shell.

Meanwhile, I get NQ after getting over 500 qual on iron nuggets while actually trying to HQ. 126 Mnd.

Does spamming enter take skill?

Bottom line is, the reward for taking your time to raise the quality of a synthesis is not present. It is all random as hell. RNG. Which goes back to the OP's point: Crafting takes too long, is boring, and involves no skill.

The point is you'd get more HQ3s if you took the time to boost that quality over 500/600 quality. There's little skill involved in HQ3ing a low rank synth anyway. Now go make me a +3 crab bow or vintage haubergeon and then we'll talk.

HQing has got to have a random factor, because if you make shit guaranteed HQs based on quality then you flood the market with HQs and they become worthless rather quickly. But I seem to remember you're one of those who is quite keen on every item being worthless.

[Reika]

Expected....

[Mireille]

I like crafting and I think that the system has the potential to take off with the introduction of group crafting, but there are a few things I am not happy about with regards to craft leve and crafting.

We get 8 leve per day, which in and of itself is fine.

but...

We may only get offered one leve for the job we want to level at the NPC in a city.

and...

The leves that are offered may be too low to really be worth the time and effort, or to high to complete successfully. This isn't so bad at the lower levels, but when you need 45k SP, and you get only get 5k by doing all the leve you can do in 36 hours its very frustrating. That's at level 31, so level 41 will be even worse I am sure.

Agreed it shouldn't be as simple as always getting 8 leve perfectly geared to give you the highest success rate, and the most SP every 36 hours. However it does seem like instead of creating one limit on skill progression you have 3 limits all nested inside each other, and they can combine to ruin the fun. I am at 31 which places me in a bad spot in terms of offerings at the NPC, and it was like that at 21 as well. To top it off we have to spend hours running across huge zones to deliver leve to the NPC who pays you off, because the only alternate transportation we have is anima. I know that there will be more transportation options later on, but aside from running this is all we have right now, and its essentially rendered worthless by its low regen rate. Crafting is my main job focus, and with the time it takes to deliver leve crafting takes all the play time I have. I'd like to get back to miner and maybe level lancer, but 3 hours a night goes into running leve everywhere from bloodshore to emerald moss because 50 GLD is more important to me. Granted that's my own choice.

I also find the seemingly random nature of synthesis success frustrating. At times it seems so tied to luck that its reminiscent of crystal synthesis in XI, but I have to work much harder to end up in failure. I often wish I there was an option to 'give up' when it becomes obvious the synth has no chance to succeed. If I am going to work at synthesis I want the choices I make to have a real chance to alter the craft. Perhaps standard synthesis should be broken into more choices. The mining and botany mini games give me the feeling that my choices influence my results, and I wish crafting was more like that. I'm not saying make it 'too weak,' but make it based more on play skill than dice rolls. With the beauty of the final products, and the potential for group crafting projects, crafting in XIV should be 'impossible to guage' fun.

Sorry my FF XI roots are showing

There have been big improvements to crafting and leve since the initial launch, and I am thankful for the effort that was put into that.