Let me start by stating that I really like the fundamental idea of crafting. Essentially, I like anything that supports the idea of player-made items and content, and crafting certainly qualifies. In the context of the MMO genre, I consider this design element to be very important for the long-term vitality of any game. Being able to create things leads to player investment, player investment leads to player retention, and retention is what it’s all about these days. Especially for MMOs.
I’ve dealt with a handful of crafting systems over the years and, in my estimation, none of them have really been successfully designed or implemented. I was hoping that GW2 would break this trend and get it right. Sadly, my current view is that it’s fallen short.
BUT… I think this game has almost all the right components for an ideal system; they just have to be leveraged differently. Design emphasis just needs to be shifted.
In my ideal crafting system, crafted items would not compete with loot drops. This is a problem many systems have suffered from, and yet new systems keep being developed that have the same inherent issue. GW2’s system is no exception here and, frankly, that’s surprising to me. It could’ve been avoided and I’m amazed that it wasn’t.
In my ideal system, crafters would enhance and change the appearance of items, and they would be almost exclusively the source of these modifications. Sure, you could get that nice weapon or armor drop, but in order to maximize its attributes and give it the look you want, you’d have to give it to a crafter, be a crafter yourself, or buy a crafted “mod package” on the market made by a crafter. In this design, crafters would no longer compete with drops but instead compliment them.
The GW2 system doesn’t work this way. However, if you’re at all familiar with it, I’m sure you can see how it could. All the necessary design elements are there. They just need to be rearranged.
Also in my ideal system, the experience of progressing in craft skills would not be a footslog. So far, again, GW2 doesn’t really deliver here. I’ve found crafting to be, by and large, tedious and a bit grindy. There are two exceptions, though:
- Cooking. Thus far, progression in Cooking has been fun. It’s been fun almost entirely because it really utilizes the discovery feature in a way that the other skills do not.
- Jewelry Making. When contrasted against weaponsmithing, tailoring, etc. it hasn’t felt as tedious to me. However, it’s progression formula seems rather simple, so once you figure it out, it’s just a matter of taking the appropriate steps. It doesn’t make me dread doing it like some of the other crafts do, but it’s not exactly engaging either.
If, like with Cooking, the other crafts had a wider range of interesting items and skins that could be uncovered through discovery, I think it’d go a long way towards making progression in them fun… and probably profitable. Which brings me to my next point…
In my ideal system, crafting would be profitable. In GW2 it’s anything but right now, and honestly that’s a real turn-off. While supply glut due to population is certainly a factor, and there’s probably little anyone can do about that right now (it’s not a bad problem to have, as problems go), you can also generally make more profit from selling materials than selling the crafted items made from them. In short, crafters aren’t making anything of greater value. Which is obviously a huge disincentive to even bother with the system.
Shouldn’t avoiding this very scenario have been a top design priority? Once again, I find myself a little mystified that the development team didn’t see this coming.
I do think this system can be salvaged though (har har, see what I did thar?). It’s not my ideal, but it comes so close to it, that it’s a bit frustrating to see it failing…
- Add more recipes for exotic items to most of the professions. Make a lot of them discoverable.
- Make skinning and reskinning items easier for crafters. Introduce skins, as found in the Hall of Monuments, to the wider game.
- Give players a bank for item/armor skins.
- Remove most upgrades from dropped items. Crafters should be far and away the primary source of upgrades.
- Introduce the ability for crafters to reverse-engineer many items.
Now, I allow that it’s entirely possible that my overall crafting experience could improve as I move up the various craft ladders (save for Cooking which, again, is already fun). However, based on a lot of the other threads I’m seeing in this forum, that’s looking hella unlikely.
I’m hoping that at least some changes get implemented before I get there. Otherwise, crafting will not be something that helps retain me. And the thing about that is, I am just the sort of player it should be locking in.
Thanks for reading.