End Game Crafting Discussion and Questions.

[Meeks]

I love crafting things inside video games, I'm one of those people that want to gather all the recipes for my profession (100% my profession in a way), while the bore of grinding 100's of materials to get to max level sucks generally. It's nice when you put forth a lot of effort into gathering them and finally craft that item you've been working so hard for. But I am disappointed in many games's end game crafted items, for pvp and pve both. In wow these items's recipe are a random drop form current tier content. Most of the time when the recipe finally drops you've already picked up a piece more powerful or useful from a boss. The crafted items are often only used and made for your off characters.

So following GW2 news for the past few months I would like to know where end game crafted items fall as far as competitiveness to gear that drops from end game bosses/dungeons. Will there be crafted weapons and armor that you pursue for current end game tier? Or will these items merely be cosmetic?

It's my personal hope that you have the opportunity to craft items like the legendary weapons from WoW. Where the items you put forth a different kind of effort, will be worth your time for you main character, rather than just falling off to your side characters.

I think a great way for implementing crafted gear that could compete with end game would be to keep the recipes OUT of the current PvE/PvP content, and put them into the PvE Scenarios. Leaving crafting to the world environment, obviously killing certain kinds of mobs/gathering specific minerals to get what is relevant. But creating mini-bosses for the rarer or more difficult recipes/ingredients necessary. This would give end game players and even ppl leveling up a larger variety in game play, and appeal to all those crafty types/collectors. Not only would this make it a slight bit easier to gear FOR your end game content and characters, but its also a great way for more casual players to feel they are being productive on a lighter scale of play. Think of it as end game raiding in smaller more casual numbers and time frame.

What do you guys think? Opinions/Thoughts/Discussion?

[roshamjoe]

I agree that I would like to see crafted items that are worthy of actually crafting versus grinding hours away trying to get caught up to your level before something is worth being wielded by your main. Granted I always start way too late so I'm always playing catch up, but once I'm capped I'd like to be able to make things that both look incredible and are worth using.

I think that if the end game crafting follows suit with what I've seen on crafting so far then we'll both be happy. I've heard that the aim is to have crafted items to be on par with or better than something that just drops off of a boss, hopefully someone can back me up with a quote as the last two years of reading updates is starting to melt together. One big problem I had with WoW was by the time I got the recipe drop I was running an instance for I typically didn't need it anymore. This brings me to a question that I've always had about any mmo ever which is why do bosses drop specific items or pieces of paper about how to build an item anyway? Sure, humanoid npcs using weapons and armor like I do could be expected to drop something, but a dragon, a giant shadow demon, a rock monster, a wolf etc... Why were these npcs carrying around a bunch of loot? Sure, some might have been protecting a chest that has loot, but off the bosses I would expect to collect teeth, scales, meat, hooves etc which I could then use to craft my Legendary Hoof Sword of Scaley Teeth. But I digress.

Recipes can be learned from trainers, and possibly drops(?), however the bulk of them are gained through trial an error by placing different components on a table and seeing if they'll make everything. This would be speculation but my hope is that when you're trying to craft the highest level items, you would need to have collected the rarest components and have to combine them with all kinds of different stuff before finally finding something that will work, and that might be just one part out of the 4 you need.

My hope is that components that make the best stuff aren't only found in the carcass of a dragon or some deep dark dungeon in repeatable mode. I'm hoping that the components are also available through vendors who only show up if you've managed to save them from x, y and z; earned their trust, in case you weren't there when they got saved; and which cost a ton of money/karma. Being a casual gamer I'm hoping that everything would be available to me that the extreme gamer can get, perhaps just at a much slower rate. This is perfectly fine for me personally as the amount of effort put into something is equal to the what you get out of it. The faster and easier you get the good stuff, the quicker it gets old and you want newer better stuff.

[Ruse]

From the wiki entry:

The items obtainable through crafting will have unique appearances but the statistics on the items are no better or worse than items attained through other ways of playing the game.

I don't see a direct source for that, but I've been hearing the same thing for awhile now. This makes me a happy camper, as I actually like crafting and resource gathering.

[Drow]

(Centaur is not here! my turn to welcome people here ^^ hehe)
And welcome to these forums, Meeks!

[Centaur]

Hi Meeks, welcome to these forums.

And sorry for the delay, Drow... even a centaur needs to take a nap sometimes. But thanks for taking over while I was away

See this article on the blog for a detailed description of crafting in GW2.

In addition, there have been some interviews with the developers, in which they said things like this:

Andrew McLeod: Players should be able to level up crafting disciplines through crafting equipment and upgrades that they would use themselves. It isn’t our intention for players to have to craft a lot of throwaway items in order to level their crafting. By not requiring players to craft large amounts of excess items in order to gain skill in their crafting professions, players that enjoy crafting should be able to carve out their own corner of the player market easier without having to compete with a glut of items created by players simply trying to level their disciplines.

...

McLeod: Our crafting system is not intended to provide exclusive rewards to crafters- if a player does not have the time or inclination to craft, they can have a friend or guild member craft for them, or can purchase the desired items from other players. It isn’t our intent to add rewards to try and get every player to craft, regardless of whether or not they actually want to. However, crafters should be able to fairly easily keep themselves outfitted in good gear.

And this quote from Martin Kerstein:

You will also be able to craft items that are just as good as the best drops in the game.

On the other hand, the discovery system for crafting recipes that GW2 has in place, prevents you from creating items that are too high level for you:

Andrew McLeod:
You will not need to find the recipe for an item before you can discover how to make an item, and experimenting with different materials will not consume the materials that you’re testing with. If you put in the correct materials to craft a discoverable recipe, you can craft the item and discover the recipe. The level of crafting skill you have in that discipline does restrict what you can discover - if you just learned how to craft weapons, you can’t immediately create legendary swords - you need to hone your skills by making more mundane swords first. However, you shouldn’t have to make twenty bronze swords before you can learn to make an iron one.

To summarize: crafting in GW2 shouldn't require a lot of grinding to advance as long as you create gear appropriate for your level (no need to create a hundred identical daggers to level up your skill), and as Ruse already stated, you should be able to craft items with identical stats as the items you gain through other means (no matter at what level of the game)... they will just have a different look.

[Amei]

Kinda waiting on begining game crafting

[Thungen]

Anybody got a list of crafting proffessions that are going to be available once released?

[Centaur]

Anybody got a list of crafting proffessions that are going to be available once released?

See this article on the blog for a detailed description of crafting in GW2.

It's all in there...

[Thungen]

Thanks Centaur

[Meeks]

Thanks for the welcome, and replies. You've hit the nail right on the head so to speak.

I have to say I'm really happy that end game crafting will be on par stat wise with items that can drop for bosses and dungeons. If what Ruse quoted from the wiki article said about unique appearances (although from reading the article Centaur put up it sounds as tho your right.) I'm doubly happy so. It would be boring if the items you craft had both the same stats AND the same look!

With all that being said and answered, maybe I missed it but it leaves me wondering if playing end game PvE content will also play a part in creating different items than you can make from the discovery system. Perhaps the discovery system will lead you to finding the recipe that requires you to play through some of that content? My biggest concern is just that you MUST do this to craft the end game items, which I don't honestly think will be a big problem. Arenanet is doing a good job watching over what players MUST do to enjoy them game vs HOW players choose to play, that they will reward you for playing the way you want. In other words I think they would make it so one crafted item would come from PvE, one from PvP, and one from world scenario content. So even if you are a crafter, you may be the pvp crafter, or the pve crafter etc.

Again thanks for the discussion guys, and the welcoming