FFXIV Random Speculation/Question thread III: Where's my beta invite?

[Purrrfect]

I can see how more relevant that is to a mmo than crafting. But you're right, they should only make what you want in the game.

[mastamind]

Was anyone able to consistently craft successfully?

[qpoiuwer]

Was anyone able to consistently craft successfully?

yeah, I've got a pretty good idea of the HQ rates and stuff like that

[tonynot]

yeah, I've got a pretty good idea of the HQ rates and stuff like that

Want to post the details of what you learned? And what the different synthesis really do?

[Kaylia]

It seems both of you don't understand there might be people that like doing the things you don't. I'm not saying I'd play a crafting job for the battle aspect, but who knows what SE has planned. Opinions =/= facts, nor do they apply to everyone universally.

You forget the part where it's not a single player game, and catering for a minority will have an impact on everyone gameplay. Endgame isn't a charity act where everyone cares about other having fun, they want to grind efficiently and that's it. Even if someone has fun playing the job, someone else won't...and if it's needed, you know people will be forced to use it (like brd in ffxi). If it's not needed, then it's useless and no one will bring crafter to fights.


Secondly, people constantly talk about the so called complexity of the gameplay. If half of the alliances are one click wonder who can't fail even if they tried, the fight will lose their epicnes. People in general don't like that kind of thing, and even if some do, why would you design something for the minority? If you want to make blacksmith useful on the front line, give them ability on par with disciples of war.

[qpoiuwer]

Want to post the details of what you learned? And what the different synthesis really do?

Spoiler: show

There's 3 numbers associated with crafting:
Progress - Try to get this to 100%
Durability - When this hits 0, you fail
Focus - The higher this is, the more likely you are to HQ

Crafting is a combination of several smaller synthesis operations. You get to choose from a number of commands:
Standard - Moderate progress increase, moderate focus increase
Rapid - High progress increase, no focus
Careful - Low progress increase, high focus increase
Every time you choose an option, you can either succeed or fail. Succeed and you'll get something like {+10%,-5,+10}, fail and you might see {+3%,-20,+1}. Sometimes you will see special abilities such as Hasty Hands (100% progress, -80 durability), or Touch Up (after you finish an item, -5-20 durability for an extra HQ dice roll chance)
Occasionally if you fail, the element becomes unstable. Further failures might cause it to become chaotic, which costs ~50 durability and half your focus (this usually means you fail, but not always). Successful synthesis attempts will cause it to revert to a stable state.

The Focus:HQ ratio looks vaguely like this (this is based mostly off of +1 items and some extrapolation, I made one +2 item with a focus of ~180 and several Touch Up attempts):
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/9703/20047108.png

As far as I can tell, you can +3 any item that is craftable. This includes ingots and stuff. If you use a +1, +2, etc. item in a higher level synthesis, it affects your starting focus. The equation for starting focus is:
{Sum of +x items/Total number of items * 100 + C} where C is usually 1-10
This means if you make something using 2 bronze ingots, the starting focus will be ~1-10. If you use 1 bronze ingot +1 and 1 bronze ingot, it will start at ~50-60, 2 bronze ingot +1s and you'll start at ~100... 2 bronze ingot +3s and you'll theoretically start at 300 focus.

For guildleves, you get free crafting materials for n items, plus a reward if you successfully complete n-1 of the items. Your final score is:
{Total focus of all items/(n-1)}
So if you are required to make 2 items (you're given material for 3), and you make 2 of them with focuses of 90 and 130, your score will be 110. If you make 3 with focuses of 90, 130, and 180, you have (400/2) 200 score. If you have a score of 100 or more, you get an extra set of items. Your reward might be 3 bronze ingots and 2 fire crystals, but if you get a high score, you might get 3 bronze ingots, 10 fire crystals, and 2 bronze nuggets.

[LD]

I screwed around with crafting on the last day of the alpha, and I gotta admit I was surprised at out entertaining it was. I think it's stupid to try to shoehorn it into combat, but it was fun fooling around with it. Having even slightly more control over your successes and failures (and HQs) meant a lot of difference.

[Enigma]

Useful stuff Qpoiuwer, thanks for the info. I like the graph you drew, haha. Is it me or does it seem like HQing higher items come endgame will be much easier, seeing as you could prep your recipe will all +3 synth items? Hmmm... could really take away from the leet factor of some of those really rare +1 items we'd see in XI. Guess SE will handle it some way, hopefully the right way... I don't want XIV to be like WoW, I liked the fact some items were crazy hard to get and could take months of camping on end... made it so much more rewarding when you actually got the item you sought.

[Kachi]

Nice-- any ideas what the different elements and colors mean, if anything?

Personally, though I think the crafting is vastly improved, I'm not especially impressed. There still doesn't seem to be any real depth to the decision-making process. A simple FAQ tells you what to do for the result you want. Where's the skill? It seems as though there's a very clear cut "right" way to do everything.

[Hyan]

Even if someone has fun playing the job, someone else won't...and if it's needed, you know people will be forced to use it (like brd in ffxi). If it's not needed, then it's useless and no one will bring crafter to fights.

How about if it's not really needed, but won't take any party space or won't affect the encounter in any Negative way? It's not like you have to sacrifice a party slot for him or anything. If he wants to participate, there'd be something for him to do, that would help others out.

You can't say for certain that it won't work, lol. As much as you would like to.

[Lucavi]

I think that depends on what SE makes of end game (and perhaps the game in general). SE can go two ways with it: Super tank or multi tank. If mobs are scaled so that a bunch of mobs of a...competitive level can nail a tank and he won't go down, we'll have super tanks. If a mob swarm is too strong for that, we'll need to divide the enemies' attention. In the latter case, if it boils down to 1-on-1, AOEs won't be necessary.

I think the number of AOE attacks this early (not to mention how it's inherent to both mage casting types) means that mob swarms will be fairly common. With PUG and MAR's slight defensive leanings (and more hand-on stat distribution), we might have more than one class be a decent tank (maybe). That doesn't necessarily make either tanking style guaranteed or mutually exclusive, but it does mean SE is mulling the subject over.

I'm hoping for more of a super tank theme, in the case of having maybe 2-3 tanks per end-game fight handling a pack of mobs, but that's going to depend on defense scaling, armor choices, and whether or not SE actually wants tanks getting hit this time around.

FFXI penalized tanks severely for taking any kind of physical damage at end-game, thus herding everyone into subbing /nin or just plain rolling nin. They didn't start heading down the "oh, it IS okay to take a hit every now and then - they have a shield!" route until around the end of TOAU when shield mastery came around, but by then, the damage was done. The only real places I remember seeing blood tanks thrive was in Dyanamis, because it really didn't matter what was soaking up the hits when you were sleepga > burning down mobs.

No comparisons to other MMOs (you won't catch me, Silverbreeze!), but I'd like to see the guys n gals clad in full plate mail being able to take a few hits from some dragon's claws or tail. What's the point of doing up the graphics with these exotic and stalwart-looking plate gearsets when you'll have all of your healers crying and complaining about having to "waste mp on the blood tank" when someone else can just blink away the hits.

I don't mind evasive tanking at all - if a character can gear themself properly to achieve a dodge/block/parry build, then so be it, but dodging countless attacks on a gimmicky system like utsu was bullshit and I'm glad nins are suffering so greatly in FFXI for the nonsense that that job brought to the game. Parrying, which is controlled by gear choices and traits within the class is one thing - same with dodging and blocking, but using a spell constantly to evade with a cloth-wearing job is silly when it winds up leaving the actual true tank jobs to wind up copying the clothies.

This is SE's lovechild, though, so we'll see what lessons they've learned this time around. I will admit that I'm gleefully happy to see that they've homogenized the equipment choices a bit better this time, with LANCERS actually being able to wear some decent fucking armor instead of this "ceramic lightweight armor" that provided absolute piss poor defense.

[Kaylia]

How about if it's not really needed, but won't take any party space or won't affect the encounter in any Negative way?

People love carrying dead weight that could simply change their weapons to be more useful (you can heal outside party). Square didnt make multiclassing easy for no reason, and they arent making disciple of the lands combat specialists.

Having people stand out of the alliance is also a great idea, people loved that in FFXI. Now you have a job that is limited to one minor "buff" outside alliances, that's some very specific niche you're targeting. Problably the same niche of people Elcura mentioned in his last post.


[edit]
And well, your armor is going to works or not. The first post made it sound like it was an important part of the battle strategy, not something minor that could occasional happens when people just happen to have a crafter.

[Hyan]

Your job isn't "limited" in any way, unlike when a combat class in XI is out of alliance and can't do his job fully because of it. Crafters can function with 100% efficiency whether in party or not. You can't compare them.

If you can either have a crafter job as a bonus or no one at all, who is going to pass the chance? Well, you don't have to invite him.

[Lucavi]

Crafting sounds fun - its one of the things I'm worried least about with this game.

Game speed, gear stats, damage mechanics (attack and defense), job balancing: that's what I'm worried about.

[Kachi]

I liked the fact some items were crazy hard to get and could take months of camping on end... made it so much more rewarding when you actually got the item you sought.

Meh to that. Much more rewarding, yes, but not nearly enough to offset all of the work and frustration that went into it. It's not an exponential-- or even proportional-- return on investment for most.

I see this as crafters being able to work harder to stack their odds rather than relying on insane casino odds to craft HQs. There was nothing cool about 1% chance maximum on HQs.

[Hyan]

I hope having capped crafting is actually respectable feat- other than that, I don't really care. I'm more interested in how gathering will function, really.

Also grouping mechanics and progression. Sounds good so far on concept, but I'd like to see how it functions in practice too.

[Killo]

Is XIV like XI where you can switch between jobs still?
From the test so far. Is there any subs?

-Sorry for dumb questions.

[Hyan]

Is XIV like XI where you can switch between jobs still?
From the test so far. Is there any subs?

-Sorry for dumb questions.

yesyes

[Killo]

yesyes

tyvm

[Cureslime]

Spoiler: show

There's 3 numbers associated with crafting:
Progress - Try to get this to 100%
Durability - When this hits 0, you fail
Focus - The higher this is, the more likely you are to HQ

Crafting is a combination of several smaller synthesis operations. You get to choose from a number of commands:
Standard - Moderate progress increase, moderate focus increase
Rapid - High progress increase, no focus
Careful - Low progress increase, high focus increase
Every time you choose an option, you can either succeed or fail. Succeed and you'll get something like {+10%,-5,+10}, fail and you might see {+3%,-20,+1}. Sometimes you will see special abilities such as Hasty Hands (100% progress, -80 durability), or Touch Up (after you finish an item, -5-20 durability for an extra HQ dice roll chance)
Occasionally if you fail, the element becomes unstable. Further failures might cause it to become chaotic, which costs ~50 durability and half your focus (this usually means you fail, but not always). Successful synthesis attempts will cause it to revert to a stable state.

The Focus:HQ ratio looks vaguely like this (this is based mostly off of +1 items and some extrapolation, I made one +2 item with a focus of ~180 and several Touch Up attempts):
http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/9703/20047108.png

As far as I can tell, you can +3 any item that is craftable. This includes ingots and stuff. If you use a +1, +2, etc. item in a higher level synthesis, it affects your starting focus. The equation for starting focus is:
{Sum of +x items/Total number of items * 100 + C} where C is usually 1-10
This means if you make something using 2 bronze ingots, the starting focus will be ~1-10. If you use 1 bronze ingot +1 and 1 bronze ingot, it will start at ~50-60, 2 bronze ingot +1s and you'll start at ~100... 2 bronze ingot +3s and you'll theoretically start at 300 focus.

For guildleves, you get free crafting materials for n items, plus a reward if you successfully complete n-1 of the items. Your final score is:
{Total focus of all items/(n-1)}
So if you are required to make 2 items (you're given material for 3), and you make 2 of them with focuses of 90 and 130, your score will be 110. If you make 3 with focuses of 90, 130, and 180, you have (400/2) 200 score. If you have a score of 100 or more, you get an extra set of items. Your reward might be 3 bronze ingots and 2 fire crystals, but if you get a high score, you might get 3 bronze ingots, 10 fire crystals, and 2 bronze nuggets.

Thank you for that! I had no idea how people were getting their focus into the hundreds.

Crafting classes as regular combat participators isn't going to work. I think S-E only is saying that because they want to leave open the possibility of gimmick fights later in the game. If you want just go through the possibilities:

- Woodworking: throw really big splinters? build giant wooden constructs?
- Smithing and armorcraft: throw a hammer at a breakable thing's weak spot? file down a dragon's nails so that it can't swipe you as hard?
- Goldsmithing: give the mobs nice watches so they won't attack you?
- Leatherworking and clothcraft: throw a really nicely woven blanket over a fire elemental or bomb to smother it?
- Alchemy and botany: RDM shit...oh wait there's already a real class for that
- Cooking: skewer enemies with meat miqobobs? throw sushi at your teammates in battle to heal them?
- Fishing: goldfarm for your party during those easier battles?
- Herding: I'll give you this one...could be a BST
- Miner: hit shit with a pickaxe? blind it with your cool mining hat?

In terms of straight up gimmick bosses it makes sense. An unstoppable NM has appeared that needs a miner to mine kryptonite from that wall over there and throw it at the mob before he becomes too strong to fight and so on. In regular battles? No, they can and should be worthless. There is no way to make a system like that that works.