Synthesizing

[Etra]

Re: Synthesizing

I'm flattered to be included in that list. Flushed cheeks aside... I'll be working the rest of the week to figure out the mechanics of what direction to face while crafting and report my findings back here no later than tuesday. The fact that they recycled this from FFXI gives me a few theories to use as a jumping-off point and hopefully I'll have at least a basic working knowledge of the system by Tuesday.

I'm also going to try to map out the pattern that the stars take (if they move at all) and come up with a way for everyone to discern the proper direction to face based on their position.

I'll make sure to doccument moon fazes and dates and my current gear bonuses and their suggested ranks for my findings so you know what to expect.

The stars don't seem to move, but I am interested in what you come up with. :0 Just remember, a survey of information is not 10 tries. :s Mostly why I'm not bothering to do it, 'cause it takes a ton of resources.

[Dux]

Re: Synthesizing

So, we should just pool our knowledge together, and formulate FFXIO's crafting guide. TGM, Malacite, Dux, Dak, Yyg, Seki and anyone else should contribute.

I am not at work next week so I will generate data on the effect of Craftmanship and Control attributes on synthesis results. This will take some time though as it is a massive (and expensive) undertaking if done properly. I will knock together a document with it all in with some pretty graphs and a list of crafting gear split per level whilst I am at it.

[Aeni]

Re: Synthesizing

I'd recommend doing this with crafting materials that you can use as opposed to something you're stuck with that does not sell or take up a whole lot of space. I'm not advocating a test, but I'm advocating that the experiences we gained so far we can put together a general FAQ. Once an FAQ and then several hypotheses have been stated, we can rely on the community at large to provide input and possibly amend the FAQ as we get more knowledge from other sites, from SE and from our own experiences. Very similar to (I believe it was Armando) FFXI and how this community pooled together our experiences and shaped our understanding of everything from effectiveness of weaponskills (not the ability, but the stat imporovement) to crafting.

[Dux]

Re: Synthesizing

I'd recommend doing this with crafting materials that you can use as opposed to something you're stuck with that does not sell or take up a whole lot of space.

Agreed, my synthesis was going to be undyed cotton cloth, need plenty of that over the coming weeks for my synthesis. As I NPC everything I don't use anyway there is no penalty for making dead end crafts as long as the skill-ups are good.

I'm not advocating a test, but I'm advocating that the experiences we gained so far we can put together a general FAQ. Once an FAQ and then several hypotheses have been stated, we can rely on the community at large to provide input and possibly amend the FAQ as we get more knowledge from other sites, from SE and from our own experiences. Very similar to (I believe it was Armando) FFXI and how this community pooled together our experiences and shaped our understanding of everything from effectiveness of weaponskills (not the ability, but the stat imporovement) to crafting.

Fair enough, although I will still run the test next week as concrete data often stimulates thoughts and idea's.

[Aeni]

Re: Synthesizing

Anyone noticing an unusual occurence of failures in synthesis last night? I was racking up failure streaks that I have never even seen before and on recipes I thought I no longer could gain any exp for. I wasn't the only one that was experiencing some tough times. Everyone around me was breaking and botching their attempts thoroughly and frequently. This was a quarter of a phase after Full Moon, which I'd imagine to still be in that "quite doable" crafting time.

On one Birdsbeak Hammer production attempt, I was failing hardcore on standard syntheses and ended up with only 4 durability left (quality of a meager 47) and that was doing nothing but standards. I logged off and logged back on and maybe for the first few syntheses on my next production attempt I was getting completions but no successes before the fail train came crashing through and nearly obliterated me.

I checked gear and made sure that I didn't have the gear damage debuff but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was maintenance the night before but I never did any kind of crafting at the time so this was my first time since maintenance.

Stealth-ninja changes FTMFL Maybe they added "fatigue" like they have for combat classes.

[Dux]

Re: Synthesizing

Apologies to all for my late posting, but I finally got around to making my test and had enough time to sort through it all.

Objective
To determine the affect of +Craftsmanship attribute
Synthesis Item: Undyed Cotton Cloth
Data Set Size: 100

Assumptions
Undyed Cotton Cloth is not a magical synthesis and as such is directly affected by +Craftsmanship
The values at which I am using in +Craftsmanship are small enough to not be affected by diminishing returns, should it exist.

Test Approach
All Synthesis was completed on Half Moon
All synthesis was completed with Common support as recommend by the synthesis receipe.
All synthesis was completed with Main Hand only
All synthesis was completed with a Bronze Needle
All synthesis results that did not result in Undyed Cotton Cloth being created were discarded.
I only performed Standard and Wait commands.
My +10 Craftsmanship was completed with a cotton doublet worn http://ffxiv.yg.com/item/cotton-doublet?id=8030005. When any piece of gear went to yellow damage I repaired the equipment back to 100% as soon as was possible.
In order to minimize any data "skew" due to an increase in Weaver Rank (which occured twice synthesis 37 and 89) I collected the data in alternating blocks of five. I.E. Sucessful synthesis 1 to 5 was performed with +0 Craftsmanship, then sucessful synthesis 6 to 10 with +10 Craftsmanship, sucessful synthesis 11 to 15 with +0 Craftsmanship and so on all the way to the 100th synthesis.
When possible I used Wait when an element became unstable in an attempt to stabilise it in order to keep the data as clean as possible. All progress loss due to Wait's was not included in the data reported here but is contained within my spreadsheet.

Identified Points Of Interest In The Dataset
Synthesis data for attempt 77 resulted in the ice element becoming unstable and finally chaotic. The resulting data for attempt 77 is there unusual in a few regards.
1) It resulted in a Durability decrease of 23 which is higher than what I had previous assumed was the cap of 20 loss.
2) It resulted in a large decrease in Quality almost twice any increase in Quality seen in the 100 synthesis. This was the only time a decrease in Quality was observed.
3) In this single data point the Progress value was no affected.

Summarised Data
Minimum Durability Loss
+0 = 0
+10 = 0
Maximum Durability Loss
+0 = 19
+10 = 20 (Excluding synthesis 77, including it is 23)
Mean Durability Loss
+0 = 7.82
+10 = 8.07 (Excluding synthesis 77 and assuming a full +20 durability loss. Including synthesis 77 it is 8.08)

Minimum Progress Gain
+0 = 1
+10 = 1 (Excluding Synthesis 77 otherwise it is 0)
Maximum Progress Gain
+0 = 18
+10 = 20
Mean Progress Gain
+0 = 11.35
+10 = 12.49

Minimum Quality Gain
+0 = 0
+10 = 0 (Excluding synthesis 77, otherwise it is -13)
Maximum Quality Gain
+0 = 8
+10 = 9
Mean Quality Gain
+0 = 2.29
+10 = 2.39

Conclusion
I can see no clear correlation between +Craftsmanship and a reduction in Durability.
I can see no clear correlation between +Craftsmanship and an increase in Quality.
There is no clear and undisputable correlation between +Craftsmanship and Progression, with this dataset the correlation is weak at best. However given Square Enixs' absolute assurance that there is a direct positive correlation betwen +Craftsmanship and Progress gain we can say that:
There was a genuine averaged increase in Progression of +1.14 (12.49 - 11.35) as a direct result of the +10 Craftsmanship.
There was a genuine averaged increase in Progression of 0.11 (1.1.4 / 10) for every one additional point in Craftsmanship.

If anybody would like to see or use my dataset for thier own purposes feel free to PM me and I can make it available to you. The data I have collected includes the text extracted directly from the FFXIV in game text box so it contains more data than I have used here and further analysis of it's data could potenitally yield useful results.


EDIT:: It occured to me this morning as I walked into the office that this data is an amalgamation of all three possible outcomes of a Standard synthesis attempts, I.E. Standard Sucess, Standard Failed, and what I term as "Standard Generic" which the in game text box reports as neither Failed nor Sucess but still seems to suceed. As there is maintenance..... in the EU timezone..... again...... *grumble grumble* I will take a stab at breaking this data down a little more to see the effect of +Craftmanship on Standard Sucess, Standard Failed and Standard Generic seperatly as there may be a stronger relation in some outcomes than others.

[Aeni]

Re: Synthesizing

Thanks for the research Dux! I'm going to look over them in more detail later tonight when I get home. Your findings are interesting. I'm going to make Iron Ingots I think and I'm just hoarding up Iron Nuggets first. Need more fire crystals though. I'm up to 460 nuggets and probably need at least 1,000 before continuing to progress my BSM. I have 2 alts now that have banked more stuff than my entire experience in FFXI and that's not an exaggeration either (even with the additional 400 inventory slots they provide me with (+40 bazaar slots) I'm a packrat to the extreme ... lol.

Anyway, the test I'm going to look at is whether or not time passed before making a choice between synthesis means anything. I might stick to standard and then do 100 of them 1/3 of the way, 1/2 of the way and 2/3 of the way and see if it is any more or less successful (not using ANY of the actions) I need to do this during one of the quarter lunar phases.

[Etra]

Re: Synthesizing

I have a question in relation to +craftmanship with progression.

Not sure if anyone noticed, but Standard synth caps progression at 20% with Rapid synth at 30%. Are these craftmanship stats supposed to break this cap, or just boost it up while you're doing higher level synths? If it is supposed to boost it during higher level synths and the cap cannot be broken, I would have to say that +control is the better way to go all around.

[Aeni]

Re: Synthesizing

If it is supposed to boost it during higher level synths and the cap cannot be broken, I would have to say that +control is the better way to go all around.

The problem with control (that I find) is that you need a bucketload of them to see significant differences in failure rates. For example, I tried making Brass Rings as an R14 ARM (or was it 15? Can't remember ...) and even with what I thought was a lot of control, I kept failing (guild support) more times than neutral/success. Control seems to be useful in the right mix with the other two but by itself it's almost meaningless. Beyond R16, you should be able to equip 3 different actions to weather the effects or rates of failure and that almost (by themselves) trump over gear at this point.

[Yygdrasil]

Re: Synthesizing

The problem with control (that I find) is that you need a bucketload of them to see significant differences in failure rates. For example, I tried making Brass Rings as an R14 ARM (or was it 15? Can't remember ...) and even with what I thought was a lot of control, I kept failing (guild support) more times than neutral/success. Control seems to be useful in the right mix with the other two but by itself it's almost meaningless. Beyond R16, you should be able to equip 3 different actions to weather the effects or rates of failure and that almost (by themselves) trump over gear at this point.

I agree here. Even if you don't ever plan to level them, everyone should work to get Leather and Alchemist up to R10 in order to equip Preserve and Fulfillment. These have been a huge turning point in my crafting and have allowed me to craft 1-2 ranks above what I should be capped at (when paired with guild support).

Preserve keeps your synth in the white for 3 consecutive attempts. More importantly, if you fall into the red, yellow or multicolored modes, Preserve will reset you back to white upon its use. This trick does not work with destabilized elements... although the core will turn white... your elements will remain unstable.

Fulfillment will improve your rate of success while synthing for 3 consecutive attempts. Although it doesn't reset you to white the way preserve does... it's definately a noticable improvement.

I cant remember what the other ones are off the top of my head, but I remember them all all being circumstantial and equally useful. The Blacksmith R10 skill works the same as Fulfillment, but only for Standard Synths. The Armorer one I think is for Speed Synths. The Goldsmithing one improves craftsmanship... which I think improves quality and chance of an HQ product. Weaver's R10 is Masterwork... improving success with Bold. Cooking I dont remember.

After I reached R10 with Alchemy, Leather and Weaver, I equiped Fulfillment/Preserve on full-time. Once I got to R15 I added Masterwork on unless I was just trying to grind out mats. For that I switched Masterwork out for Hasty Hand.

TBH, I have hardly seen any major benefit to increasing +Craftsmanship/Control/+ Magic Craftsmanship etc. The biggest advantage I use are the abilities.

I start every attempt with a standard action. If my synth succeeds and remains white, I use standard again. If it fails, remains white and offers me fulfillment, I use it. If it fails and turns red/yellow/multi and offers me Preserve, I use it. If it fails and turns red/yellow/multi and offers me BOTH, I use Preserve to stabalize. Continuing in that fasion, I've been able to complete 90% of synths at or below my current rank and 70% of synths up to 2 ranks higher than me.

[Aeni]

Re: Synthesizing

Right now, with my gear mix, I'm able to complete 85% of all synths at or below rank w/o support, 95% of all synths with support, with the exception of the recipes which require common or guild support (facilities) I can complete about 40% of synths w/o support 2 ranks above and I think my success rate is almost 0% at 3 ranks above. With the support, I can complete maybe 70% of synths 2 ranks above and maybe 20% of synths at 3 ranks above. 1 rank higher seems to negatively impact me very little with support and even without support I can struggle to complete it about 50-60% of the time.

The major problem I have is to complete synths with quality higher than 100 for recipes that are the same rank or 1 or 2 ranks higher. Now, higher ranks, I can understand, but I cannot understand why the failure rates seem to work against you in obtaining a chance for HQ. And the situation with the game currently is to lock you out of that recipe once you've moved 10 ranks past it, thereby shunning you from HQ chances almost permanently (with my experience so far in BSM and other players from groups like SA and BG sharing similar stories)

So, what you have is an opportunity to only get HQ chances around 8-9 ranks beyond the recipe ranks and in the meantime you have to face a decision (particularly true the higher you go) ... do I want to continue to spend even more of my resources with this particular recipe that no longer gives me meaningful SP/Exp in hopes of getting HQ (again, no guarantees, this is just to even have a place at the casino table as a metaphor) or do I just forge on ahead and hope all of these dopey substandard results sell and may have to take losses in trying to undercut other players to get those things to move off the retainer (to clear inventory so you're not sitting on money)

It wouldn't be so bad if the option was there to rely on old recipes in order to make some moolah to fund your "R&D" into higher ranked recipes but the system won't allow it and you'll have to play on the fringe (margins) in order to do so. Time and resources can quickly take a toll on crafters that wish to visit the old recipes to try for HQ and the payoff may be even worse than if they focused on other sources of income (i.e., grinding battlecraft leves)

[Dux]

Re: Synthesizing

So as promised here is the results broken down by Work Unit. Note that I have corrected errors in my spreadsheet which has slightly altered the SuperSet data reported in my previous post just in case the more observant notice the discrepency and there is a known issue with the spreadsheet incorrectly reporting the minimum values in Failed and Sucess Generic tables (the averages are not affected).

It was too complicated for my tiny mind to type the data in neatly so I have put them into a JPG as excel is much better at formatting than I am.
http://i.imagefra.me/016hvc1g

Terminology
Work Unit: The outcome of selecting Standard from the Synthesis menu when performing Synthesis.
Sucess: Any Work Unit that results in the text "You use Standard Synthesis. The attempt succeeds!"
Fail: Any Work Unit that results in the text "You use Standard Synthesis. The attempt fails!"
Sucess Generic: Any Work Unit that results in the text "You use Standard Synthesis." (Ignoring Chaotic for now)

Analysis
The Superset shows a mean Progress improvement of (12.52 - 11.39) = 1.13 for +10 Craftsmanship
The Sucess set shows a mean Progress improvement of (15.55 - 14.77) = 0.78 for +10 Craftsmanship
The Fail set shows a mean Progress improvement of (5.75 - 5.43) = 0.32 for +10 Craftsmanship
The Sucess Generic shows a mean Progress improvement of (15.33 - 13.70) = 1.63 for +10 Craftsmanship

Conclusions
With all the assumptions made in my previous post we can say that:
1) The effect +Craftsmanship does change depending on the outcome of the particular work unit (Sucess, Fail or Sucess Generic)
2) Sucess Generic work unit result benefits more (by 50%) than any other work unit result

Speculation
Conclusion 2 is very interesting because IF Sucess Generic is a more common work unit result (vs Sucess) when making synthesis close to your max skill level then +Craftsmanship has more impact when skilling up than when mass producing low level items.

The overall lower quality gains and higher durability loss for Sucess Generic over Sucess does suggest that Sucess Generic would be a be the more likely work unit result when performing synthesis at your skill cap however suspicion is not proof, further investigation is required.

[Aeni]

Re: Synthesizing

The overall lower quality gains and higher durability loss for Sucess Generic over Sucess does suggest that Sucess Generic would be a be the more likely work unit result when performing synthesis at your skill cap however suspicion is not proof, further investigation is required.

Funny you should post this as I was working on Undyed Cotton Cloths last night. Ever since I got to Rank 14+ on tailor I was able to equip a few upgrades and noticed that I stopped receiving fails and got more success generics instead. The rate of success success remained roughly the same. I think maybe there might be a translation issue with SE on what they posted at Lodestone. What they should've said was...

"A particular stat can affect the outcome of failure" because the term success is fraught with ambiguity at the very specific meaning and definition of that term.

I suppose a success is where you didn't destroy the very thing you touched but it's a funny logic of "half empty" and "half full".

[Dux]

Re: Synthesizing

Funny you should post this as I was working on Undyed Cotton Cloths last night. Ever since I got to Rank 14+ on tailor I was able to equip a few upgrades and noticed that I stopped receiving fails and got more success generics instead.

You don't happen to have the logs for this do you? One of the big problems with all my work is that right now I only have one set of data to work with which means condifence in my conclusions is still low. In any case it piqued my interested so I performed the same calculation on my dataset, here are the results.

+0 Craftsmanship Work Units
Sucess Generic = 129 (27.6%)
Sucess = 196 (41.9%)
Fail = 142 (30.4)
Total number of work units = 467

+10 Craftsmanship Work Units
Sucess Generic = 134 (30.7%)
Sucess = 165 (37.6%)
Fail = 137 (31.4%)
Total numebr of work units = 436

Analysis
There is a 3% increase in Sucess Generic's in +10 Craftsmanship
There is a 3% decreease in Sucess in +10 Craftsmanship
There is a 1% increase in Failure in +10 Craftsmanship

Conclusions
The 1% increase in Failure for +10 Craftsmanship is very small and is a very poor indicator of a correlation. I would say from my dataset the confidence of a correlation here is low.

The 3% increase in Sucess Generic's without a corresponding 3% drop in failures is interesting. Also the 3% decrease in Sucess was unexpected. At this time I do not have enough data to say if this just a result of the RNG or if +Craftsmanship really does affect Sucess and Sucess Generic however given that 3% increase is so very small it is a very poor indicator of a correlation. I am of the opion that this is actually a result of RNG as it is counter-intuitive/non-sensicle that increasing Progress without reducing Quality or Durability would reduce a Sucess to a Sucess Generic.

Without more data I can not say with absolute certainty but so far the data has not convinced me there is a correlation between +Craftsmanship and the outcome of a work unit.

One final point is that this synthesis is Rank 15 (assuming Yellow Gremlin is correct) and your observed reduction in failures may simply be the result of you then being only 1 Rank of the Synthesis Rank. We all have seen how big the difference is when you are only one Rank lower compared to two or three.

[Aeni]

Re: Synthesizing

Without more data I can not say with absolute certainty but so far the data has not convinced me there is a correlation between +Craftsmanship and the outcome of a work unit.

Not for cloths, Dux. I've noticed a disturbing trend with only cloth synthesis, in which they are prone to more botches than any other recipe in that or any other Hand discipline. This probably explains why many players tend to overprice their goods, seeing that they've experienced a larger proportion of botches with cloth making and seek to compensate themselves by passing on the costs to their customers.

In any event, I do have +35 craftsmanship with my gear, so what I saw was an increase of almost 20 points of that stat in upgrading. Since the Undyed Cotton Cloths were previously a R18 recipe and now R15, I thought of "grinding" off that when I hit 14. I never attempted to do this recipe at R13. My work was largely using old gear and hitting up a few cloths and then upgrading and continuing the work. The failures were still there, but it was so noticeable how they just "disappeared" that I couldn't ignore this. On further inspection I was able to gleen from the log (at the time) that instead of the failures I was getting I saw more "success generic" while the number of actual successes remained the same (which wasn't too hot to begin with ... maybe on the order of 20% or so) Basically it was 40% failure converted into 15% failure/25% generic + w/e generic I had before that.

I still require guild support in making the cloths, however, as it's almost 100% failure (0% success success, maybe 1% success generic) w/o it at this rank.

I also thought of something. That the more points you have in a stat that the curve will be more steeper and then plateaus. For example, 10 points may yield 3% and 15 points may yield 8% and then 20 points may yield 15% and then after 20 points, going beyond, it plateaus (or steeply declines) As you rank up, the scale moves (or the curve widens) but at the early ranks the significance of every point means a lot more and after the first threshold it can be very large and then beyond a second threshold it gets hit hard with DR (diminishing returns)