Crafting for crafters

[Brytwend]

There really wasn't crafting in the original GW.



Devs have said they're more about horizontal (becoming more versatile) than vertical (stats go up) progression, so IMO this ties into that. In the original GW people paid very high sums for a weapon that was no better than others (or armor) but had a rare, cool skin. It was a status symbol of sorts. If there are cool skins only available to crafters, there will be a market for that.

The other side of this (and here I'm speculating) is that perhaps a crafted set will offer, say, high crit chance so if that's what you want to focus on, you'll want to buy this crafted set. Or more defense, or higher health, etc. Or maybe rather than do PvP or go dungeon crawling, you'd rather just make money and buy gear. I think they want to offer options for all those playstyles

That sounds like a totally acceptable incentive to me. What I'm most unsettled about is the idea that there will be little uniqueness to your character in combat (not counting personal skill) other than looks. I'm not so much criticizing as voicing my sheer uncertainty about it. The concept is very interesting, I'm not just sure how they'll pull it off without everyone feeling like they are put into similar positions as others but with slightly varied spells. So being able to customize your weaponry would be nice, even if it is just to add conditions or small bonuses and everyone can choose between those.

Wouldn't it be sort of funny if your crafted sword had all this eccentric jewelry on it, and ominous looking designs and a fully automated lazer guided kill button-majig on it, and you hit a guy for like 14 damage and then some noob comes in with his brand new CustardFace Sword of Noobton with nothing on it and slashes the *(#$ out of you for like 600 damage?

[Ruse]

Oh, as I understand it we'll be able to customize stats somewhat. It's just that you would (for instance) sacrifice some damage for a higher health bonus on your weapon, or choose a chance to stun on hit over adding a little fire damage or whatnot.

As to the weapon appearance thing...yeah, that'll totally be possible still :P lol. They're going to allow you to transfer the skin of one item you like to another (IE, you love this skin but this other sword has way better stats...so you make the sword with way better stats look like the one you prefer.) So a max-level dude could run around in starter armor looks and roflstomp you, assuming he has the skill. You won't be able to automatically look at someone and tell if their gear is awful or not.

EDIT: Another way to customize your character besides weapon/utility skill choice are traits. These can do anything from upping base stats to making a previously melee dagger skill a thrown skill, that kind of thing.

[Brytwend]

And now I'm a happy Brytwend lol thank you for the clarification on that one. I think it's really fun to trade one thing for another and it would be totally OP if you could just buff your stuff up with everything on it. I've always been a conditions/status enhancement kind of guy so that's another thing that attracted me to the Mesmer class, that storm attack that adds random conditions and then the Confusion...woo that's gonna rock hard.

Now that you've explained it to me a little better I think this concept will be far superior to the old ways of "If he sparkles: run. if he's dull as a rock: kill". I also like that max-level dudes won't be able to go roflstomp (love that word) everyone just because they are in a hugely active guild and monopolize on a particular drop/set. I do like the idea of gaining armor and weapons from mobs that are difficult to kill and from bosses, but what I'm expecting is that crafters will be able to make weapons that are equally as powerful but maybe don't apply the same conditions all across the board.

What about consumables? Does anyone know how consumable items (healing, condition removal, buffs) will be used or if they will be used at all?

[Ruse]

We know cooks will be able to craft temporary combat buffs, but that's about it (that I've seen anyway). They haven't released much detail on crafting yet unfortunately. It's an aspect I enjoy, too.


EDIT: I stand corrected. Apparently wiki has a list of known consumables already.


EDIT EDIT: And the older blog post on crafting if you haven't seen it yet.

[Brytwend]

Alright, that's an interesting take on it. Looks like there won't be a market or need or maybe no existence of healing consumables. That's okay, though I'm really interested in what the economy will be like and what kinds of things will be up for sale.

Nice double edit lol post-conscious.

[Mike Fang]

For the ultimate in crafting, I would recommend Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. They made their crafting system a mini-puzzle game about managing a crafting point pool that would determine the quality of the item you created. It was complex and sometimes a challenge, but it was also creative and engaging, making you feel like you did more to create the item than just put mats in slots and then watch a loading bar. It did have its frustrating moments, since you could waste materials if you had accidents, but then again sometimes that makes success all the more rewarding, knowing that you successfully solved a problem and avoided wasting things.

From what this sounds like, I think GW2 crafting will be less complicated, but by rewarding experimenting, it will still give the player more of an active role in developing their own skills than grinding recipes.

[roshamjoe]

Non GW2 crafting related paragraphs incoming:

SWG had one of the better crafting mechanics that I've had experience with. You would have to find materials but rather than just an iron node that yielded the same exact ore for everyone, you would scour planets looking for the best possible stats for the iron ore. Once you found a good spot, you would have to set up harvesters which would take hours and sometimes days to get you a good amount. The resource could also "dry up" and you would have a harvester, which cost money and I think energy to run, humming along producing nothing. So you had to be pretty good about checking them and repairing, replacing, moving them when necessary.

You would then put the ingredients you collected into a crafting station, which would have its own stats based on whoever made that station out of whatever materials. Based on your skill in crafting, the quality of the crafting machine and the quality of the ingredients you put into making an item, you could get extremely different results for identical items. In traditional MMO crafting, anyone who can make an item makes it with stats equal to the recipe. However in SWG, the stats on something like a rifle might be 100 damage when created by someone just mass producing the item whereas if you go to someone who took the time to get the best of the best you might see the damage at 200.

While this type of system might seem tedious, this let people focus entirely on the "commercial" part of the game, completely ignoring combat. People would sometimes seek out the best crafters in the game rather than just any crafter and at one point I remember seeing a line of 100(ish) people waiting to get the guns that someone who was quitting had crafted. It also made the game a little more interesting than grab quests, kill things, turn quest in. I had a buddy who was just a merchant, crafter, harvester type character so he would enlist the help of my creature handler commando skills to get to the more dangerous parts of planets to get the good resources.

Back to GW2:
The thing I like most about the crafting is that you can choose to level them all if you want to. I like equally as much the fact that nodes are shared and cannot be "stolen" by someone while you finish off the last mob who was standing on top of it. I like to craft but it always seemed more like a nuisance than something that I could enjoy because I had to decide which I wanted to level, had to pick the corresponding gather skill, gather all the mats through hours of running circles in zones hoping to get there ahead of someone else or spend a small fortune on the auction house to get a few more points. Looking forward to trying out the experimental crafting without first looking on some sort of wiki, and if possible, all of my crafting will be discovered versus looked up. We'll see how long that lasts once I have about 50 components in my hands though

[Chromie]

Non GW2 crafting related paragraphs incoming:

SWG had one of the better crafting mechanics that I've had experience with.

I think the crafting is the only reason I stayed well the community also. SWG had the best crafting I have ever seen in a game. Frankly I joined TOR because of this interview right here

"The best stuff is always going to come from other players, and then be made by other players. There will be stuff that you can craft that is among the best stuff in the entire game."

That is an actual quote from the interview and I was like omg that's awesome good to see crafting getting some love. You can imagine my horror to find out that there is actually a crafting system worse than WoW's.

I'm really interested in what A-net will do and I'm looking for info if any available.

[Weebitt]

Will there be a dressing room/preview method of viewing your items before you buy or equip or after you have finished crafting?

[Ruse]

I haven't seen mention of one, Weebitt. I would LOVE the feature, though, as I anticipate I'll buy a lot just for skins. P: