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I'll preface this by saying I personally hate complications. There's already complications in the crafting process - and that is the randomness that is the quality and progress gain. Granted those aren't too difficult to overcome, but they could have made getting 100% quality items a little bit more challenging, and eliminated the need for the extra painful complications.

So why do I hate complications?

The first issue is that they always double dip the pain.

If you choose to attempt to fix them, they still do their damage to your item. Be that quality decrease, progress decrease, or just extra point cost for actions. These all still apply while you are spending the 50~100 point action to fix. So a really nasty complication that does medium quality hit, medium progress hit, and requires 100 points each 'attempt' at fixing really ends up costing a crafter far more than is fair. In a scenario where it takes 3 actions to clear the complication, its possible that they spend 300 action points fixing the complication, 200 points of lost quality, and 200 points of lost progress, for a grand total of 700 lost points. Essentially this means you can't get the 100% quality you need to complete the item, and in some cases, just seeing the complication pop up means you've lost what you are doing. Yes, i know you can complete items at D tier quality, but no one is going to want to use that item. Its trash. Even in a lot of cases, B quality items are trash.

Second issue is that you basically need to prep your table/tools for the most painful complications, but you can't possibly cover them all. At the very most you can cover 3-4 of them, and you just hope you don't get the others. At high levels of crafting there is a non-zero chance you're going to have to fully eat a complication, which i feel isn't very much in the spirit of high level crafting. They should all be something you can deal with, even without the right tool, utility. Your skill alone should give you an out to the complication - maybe not the best one, but one that you can do and still end up with a fighting chance for that A rating.

Third issue is that even if you knock the complication out in a single - brilliant stroke of action, you still get hit for it. Yes, the first round of the penalty applies no matter what you do. Its probably difficult to code any other way, but to me, if you deal with a complication immediately, you shouldn't suffer any of the penalty, just like if you mez/charm an add immediately, the problem is neutralized - at least for the time being.

The fourth issue is the overall spirit of the complication. I understand that complications are meant to be the 'unforseen add, or bad pull, or multi-pull' of the crafting sphere. A difficult challenge to overcome, and failure to do so, means a wipe. The problem here is that all of those can be overcome in a variety of ways - many of those that are 100% effective at mitigating any impact to your group or raid. They can all be avoided ahead of time, with skilled pullers, psi or bards ready to mez at a moments notice, or in a raid, off tanks and healers picking up the slack. As i stated with the third issue - the first part of the complication ALWAYS gets you. A quick reaction doesn't negate the damage, only lessens it. In fact, sometimes any reaction to it at all is worse than ignoring it.

The fifth issue. Some complications are better left being ignored. Some that hurt just action point costs, or progress costs still hurt you while you are fixing the issue - which means if you spend more than 1-2 points fixing the issue, you would have been better off 'fixing' the issue by ignoring it all together. A low loss of progress complication might set you back 30 points each turn you ignore it, for a total of 150 points, but fixing it in 2 turns @ 50 points per fix sets you back 160 points (30 x 2 + 50 * 2). If you get unlucky in your rolls or your skill isn't quite there, 3 turn fix costs you 240 points. Granted, sometimes ignoring complications will bite you in the ass with a secondary complication, but most of the time ignoring certain complication is the best way to go.

Sixth issue. Sometimes you'll get that really really shitty finishing complication - one that pops up right as you move on to the finishing step - but right before finishing. Very very rarely will you have enough action points to deal with the complication and finish the item, especially if your quality is at 100%. This one is the biggest 'fuck you' of all the complications. It essentially robs you of 100% quality item even if you've been doing everything right the whole way. The adventuring equivalent is some 'on death' ability that a boss has that removes all but trash items from his drop table.

Solutions

Remove complications. This might be overkill, and maybe it makes crafting boring for some, but tossing them out is a fair solution based on how terrible they are.


Tweak the impact. Lessen the action cost to fix them and lessen the damage they can cause. This could be done by making it so that you minimally clear 50% of the complication with even the worst of rolls (thereby making them at most last 2 turns), by zeroing out the 'fix' action costs so you don't double dip the pain, or by making it so that the 'pain' of each turn of complication is quite low. I would say that zeroing out the fix action costs is the best solution if you want to try to leave complications 'as is' in the game but still deal with the fact they are mostly rage inducing garbage.

Make complications one turn Rather than make the decision to 'fix' the complication a chain of gambling (do i fix it and risk it taking too many turns to fix, or do i ignore it and risk it becoming worse, or it ruining my craft), make it a 1 time gamble. 1 turn. The actions then being fix (costs action, eliminates any penalty - but you run the risk of failing the fix and still taking the hit) or ignore (costs no action, but run the risk of taking double the pain). In this case, balance still needs to be done to ensure that taking a full hit of the complication and the full double hit of the complication don't completely ruin the craft.

Make them much more rare. I shouldn't be getting item ruining complications on bags i've made 20 times already. Complications should only be for items within 5 levels of your skill. If you are creating an item that is recipe level 10, you shouldn't ever get complications on them if you are level 16. Those items are now trivial and you should be able to reap the benefit of your high skill. Second - getting 2 different complications at different times in the crafting process should be nigh impossible. A single complication per craft should be all.

Haffhand here, I'll do my best to keep this brief. Fargham, EVERYONE hates complications, that is THE feature that makes Vanguard crafting rise above many other mmo's. I am sure it has been noted by others that better skills, clothing and tools all buffer against their occurrence on the one hand and their severity on the other. Oh, and let's not ignore the players part in gaining amateur status and those improving attribute totals.

It is also worth noting that not all complications are detrimental, several, including the "careful" varieties award a quality bonus while only extracting a progression or action point penalty. Don't panic, read the description carefully. Consider whether to ameliorate them or WORK THROUGH them. Much later in your crafting experience, you'll start seeing "Maker's" complications that are in no way detrimental but rather huge quality and fast completion bonuses. Admin types, they still work, right? Right??

For my part, I find myself only responding to those that directly impact a work sequence using a tool or a utility when the new complication specifically targets those actions. Then, it is almost mandatory to allow any chance to finish the item at all. If a second complication arises, it becomes mandatory to cancel one of them, usually the most recent. There are some real show stoppers in the mix as well and these demand action.

Finally, I would like to ask this question; do you expect every item you produce to be Grade "A" or 100% pristine quality for your novice level output? If so, suck it up, ABANDON the obvious lost causes and move on. At worst, you've lost a few raw materials, some cheap utilities and/or one recipe of a work order. Save the stress, try again later. Go kill something instead. My experience with Vanguard goes back to beta testing in the fall of 2006 and a subscription that ran onward to 2011-12, I know a bit about this title. For me, the crafting game has always been richly rewarding if one summons the patience to live through their novice levels.

Cheers, Haffhand/Hollyrood/Halfern/Jimmu/Maldaver (currently)

Not sure if your basing you point of your experience with Emulator. If so here is a post from Jakkal about complications that i hope will clear it up.

" Welcome to VGO and thanks for testing!

To answer your questions as best as I'm able:

1. In Live VG, complications were tier based, so harder ones only popped up during the higher level stuff. In VGO, all complications have a chance to pop, they have not been separated into tiers yet. So you could get a tier 5 complication on a tier 1 recipe. Since this is all skill based, and if you get a higher level complication with low level skills, it might be nigh impossible to work. There is a work around for now, you can use this command to make yourself level 50: /say .setlevel 50 1 1

If you do this, you will not be able to get lower level work orders, and there might be some other oddities, so don't bug report anything level related (gear, skills, etc, included).

Right now we're at the stage of crafting that we just want to make sure that you can start the recipe, it uses up the proper resources for it, and you get the proper items if you finished. The in between stuff is still being worked on."

Jakkal post is much longer just post the parts might help with your point. Here is link to that post: https://vgoemulator.net/phpBB3/viewtopi ... ons#p29569