Crafting...... Jesus $%#@ing Christ!

[Peregrine]

The crafting system is like the battle system: it's been repaired too many times with too many different end goals and needs an overhaul prior to ps3 launch in combination with materials production overhaul.

Many of the features in crafting were based on the very old system where the higher the quality, the harder the synth. Essentially the old system made level exponentially more influential on hq ability. When they nerfed that, they nerfed a lot of the rates to compensate. It's three systems layered on top of each other like a makeshift ancient city, not so much a cohesive, unified idea.

[Girlie]

Rapid and bold both make perfect sense to me, honestly. There's no point to using them when you are just high enough for a recipe, of course. They'll most likely just fail. But for a recipe, say 15 to 20 ranks under you, they become very useful.

It's kind of a pain to have hasty hands available all the time because of the way the crafting window is set up, so rapid is nice when you run out of crafted mats and need to throw together a few more (like iron nuggets or cotton yarn). Instead of having a maximum of 20% progress as in a standard synthesis, you can progress up to 30% per synth. The rapid synthesis action animation is also shorter for most crafts.. although for Culinarian it actually seems longer.

Bold is fantastic for making lower ranked items that people request. The maximum progress is lower (allowing more chances to increase quality) and the quality tends to be higher. Yes, there is no quality score that guarantees HQ success, and I'm not even sure that a higher quality necessarily increases the chances of HQ, but it does seem like a higher quality score makes touch ups more likely to yield an HQ result. If they ever adjust the HQ mechanic to make more sense, bold synth will be fantastic exactly as it is.

Both have a higher chance of failure per synthesis, but that seems like an obviously good feature to me. You shouldn't be able to rapid synth or quality synth a recipe that you only just have the expertise to synthesize at all. Grinding out training recipes *absolutely should* be using only standard, wait, and action skills. Bold and rapid should only be for 'old hat' recipes, exactly as they are now.

[Lienn]

I agree with Girlie. Her post said exactly what i would've posted (but with much better english than mine would. lol).

[Gracious]

The time it takes to craft an item should be reduced. When I first started crafting I found I liked that it was not a basic "push the button" = craft done type of function. However, now I realize it's a major time sync. Making crafting into a mini-game type of event is interesting. The way it is done currently does not feel fun in the least though. If they did something similar to fable games where you have to "hit" the sweet spot to craft it maybe more fun and interactive. And I have to give this a rant ~ I'm so tired of 100% fails I could scream!

[TheVedis]

1) Unstable elements decrease the higher you get in rank compared to the synth itself. You see a TON of them when you are really too low to synth the item. If its 9 ranks above you, blame your rank, not the fact it goes unstable.

2) Hasty Hands gives you half SP. By using rapid when its doable(usualy when you pass the optimal rank of the synth) then you can still get full SP for the item, it can add up over time. So if it gives you 100 SP for the synth, you could get 50 from hasty or 100 from rapids....if your doing alot of that synth the 50 sp lost can add up.

3) The crafting times keep getting reduced, but it takes roughly 45 seconds per synth now unless its well above your rank.

4) Hq items require you to get high quality. Your rank MEANS NOTHING in this regard except that you wont fail bold synthing(the way to get more quality) to raise that chance of getting an HQ. Want a better chance, use HQ mats too.

5) Most abilities do suck, also keep note that most abilities DO NOT STACK, when you use one the other fades immediately.

[Novak]

If they did something similar to fable games where you have to "hit" the sweet spot to craft it maybe more fun and interactive.

Yes I think crafting would be better if it was like the gathering system.

5) Most abilities do suck, also keep note that most abilities DO NOT STACK, when you use one the other fades immediately

You are right MOST do not stack, however, Grandmastery does stack with all the R15 abilities and does not cancel them or itself out.

[TheVedis]

Yes I think crafting would be better if it was like the gathering system.



You are right MOST do not stack, however, Grandmastery does stack with all the R15 abilities and does not cancel them or itself out.

ok so yeah, even if it does stack, its "most effective on parts"
ive noticed whenever it says that, it means you get very little out of it if the item isnt a part(or whatever its aimed at if its another item)

granted it doesnt make it useless, just not as useful on stuff that isnt what its aimed at

[Reika]

@Girlie

True rapid and synth is good for those recipes that you are higher rank than, but theres no reason for them to have higher fail rates at all since they already have their own penalties over using standard synth.

@Vedis

Just because you use HQ mats doesnt mean you will get HQ return. 400+ quality 5 times in a row yielded NQ all times when making something 35 ranks below me (Iron Nuggets). Finished items are much different. using touch up is the same as 'Refinishing' an item, so you get extra chances to generate the HQ process. Materials don't have this ability. They are a hit or miss, weather you have high quality or not. And you can HQ things with way less than 100 quality. The problem is the quality doesn't determine the probability that the item will HQ. it is all just RNG on that part. If materials and parts had touch up as well, there would be much less of an issue with all this.

[Jinko]

What I would like to see with the crafting animation is that when you start synthesis your character starts to do his animation non stop, whilst he appears to be crafting you then select the skills at your own speed.

This way you don't click a skill wait for animation, click a different skill wait for animation, you just click one skill after the other.

It would make crafting soooooo much faster.

They could also do with redesigning the crafting UI, I want to see either an action bar or buttons instead of selectable text.

Oh and why do my skills pop up randomly ?, its so annoying, wouldn't it make more sense that you start a synth with all the skills available and then they become greyed out or disappear as you use them ?

The sad part is that I imagine the majority of us could come up with a more interesting and fun crafting system and yet some how it alludes SE.

[Reika]

What I would like to see with the crafting animation is that when you start synthesis your character starts to do his animation non stop, whilst he appears to be crafting you then select the skills at your own speed.

This way you don't click a skill wait for animation, click a different skill wait for animation, you just click one skill after the other.

It would make crafting soooooo much faster.

They could also do with redesigning the crafting UI, I want to see either an action bar or buttons instead of selectable text.

Oh and why do my skills pop up randomly ?, its so annoying, wouldn't it make more sense that you start a synth with all the skills available and then they become greyed out or disappear as you use them ?

The sad part is that I imagine the majority of us could come up with a more interesting and fun crafting system and yet some how it alludes SE.

Great idea! That will speed up crafting by the butt loads.

I hope a mod is reading this and forwarding it to the devs.