Guild Wars 2

cont

I dinged level 62 today. I started out at level 59 yesterday. So in two days, I’ve farmed 3 high levels on noob exp. or basically HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of exp in noob’s land Queensdale, JUST to grind out the mats for the second tier of armorsmithing, and as you can see, I’m not even half done yet. (This doesn’t include the levels I ground out farming the copper for the first tier.) If this was a fresh toon, I would have easily spent the first 20 levels grinding out these mats, if not more. So this tells me two things. One, there’s no way in hell you’re going to keep your profession up to speed with your character level. Even if all you did was grind mats and learn new recipies, I still don’t think you could do it. So the only reason you have to learn a tradeskill is for the benefit of gearing up a later toon, or because of the gear you’re able to make at 80. Since I haven’t concerned myself much yet with what’s at level 80, idk if that to be true or not. Second, learning your professions is a MASSIVE grind. FAR more of a grind than it ever was in WoW. At least in WoW, you could ‘shortcut’ the skillups just by learning basic recipes and making the easiest items, and worry about getting all the fluff recipes at the end. Since you always had to wait to get to the next zone before you could farm the mats you needed for the gear level you were going to be while in that zone, your gear always lagged about 10 levels behind you. But at least you still had enough time to run around and do quests, dungeons etc. Here, I don’t see you keeping it anywhere NEAR your level, and you definitely wouldn’t have time to do anything else other than grind and craft. So yes, the tradeskills are nothing but one big massive grindfest.

Crafting mat drop rates in this game are really bad, easily the worst most annoying system I’ve ever seen in an MMO. I’ve been trying since I got GW2 to keep my armorsmith and weaponsmith up to where my character could actually make something useful to me. I’d venture to say it’s impossible. Instead of progressing in zones designed for my level I find myself traveling around all the newbi zones just to get through the first tier. My mains up to 34 and both of my crafting skills are only in the mid 60’s at this point. I probably gained about 8 levels downleveled and farming in the newbie zones just trying to get mats.

This anti farming code makes no sense. It actually has the opposite effect as far as I can tell. You have to farm way more mobs and spend many more hours then if the drop rates were more consistent.

I think they should put these rare crafting items back on the karma vendors list. I mean, I don’t exactly have an infinite supply of karma and every drop of karma I have, I earned by doing stuff. So why can’t I use them to level (non cooking) crafting?

Is the drop rate bad…or is it just because so many people are crafting right now? I do agree about the butter thing though…but complaining just because you can’t get what you want? They increase the drop rate, price of mats goes down, and even further when most are done with crafting. How are you gonna handle that?

Anything in life rewards creativity, this game is no different. Crafting is already so easy as it is in this game to max. The most efficient way to grind for mats are usually not immediately obvious…most just take the obvious route without spending much time to think about optimizing their action. Of course it’s always easier to just complaint and hope dev will spoon feed you.

Wazabi.1439:

Is the drop rate bad…or is it just because so many people are crafting right now? I do agree about the butter thing though…but complaining just because you can’t get what you want? They increase the drop rate, price of mats goes down, and even further when most are done with crafting. How are you gonna handle that?

Anything in life rewards creativity, this game is no different. Crafting is already so easy as it is in this game to max. The most efficient way to grind for mats are usually not immediately obvious…most just take the obvious route without spending much time to think about optimizing their action. Of course it’s always easier to just complaint and hope dev will spoon feed you.

A. I very rarely bother with the auction house, so I couldn’t care less about how higher drop rates would effect the prices. I peek from time to see what the price of mats are, but I absolutely refuse and simply cannot afford to spend 1-4 silver per blood, bone, claw, etc, especially when I need 15 per crafted item.

B. I, and many others aren’t expecting to be spoon fed anything. I understand the whole carrot and stick system; I use it with my kids. However, A-Net has the carrot so far out on the stick that it’s really not worth trying to reach. What I do expect is to be able to craft effectively. As it stands, I can clear a zone with 100% completion and still not have anywhere even close to the fine mats I need to even make one item, forget trying to actually level my profession at all.

I dunno, I’ve managed to successfully max 6/8 crafting professions so far, on my way to 8/8. I haven’t had much issue with material costs. I will agree that gear prices are stupidly low, but that’s not due to crafting material costs, that’s because there’s a stupid supply of gear at the moment. You can barely craft exotic gear at 400 for a profit.

You CAN buy items form the Trading Post but they are not cheap because of the low drop rates.

For example, I wanted to level my leatherworking on my Asura engineer. She had just hit level 40 and that meant 1G for a trait book. I had 1G 30S something saved-up in my bank and Asura took it all out. After trait book she had about 40S left (she had some money on her). 30 small claws form the Trading Post cost ~32S but thankfully, after making two rare items, Asura hit 150 leatherworking. She could then start using cotton and next tier of leather and make herself items appropriate for her level. But this is only after I had hobbled my way very close to 150 leatherworking.

More importantly, she used-up all my savings to the point when I logged on to my Guardian and saw she only had 2S something on her, I was literally like “Can I even waypoint somewhere useful?” Fortunately, next task on Guardian’s list was doing CM story with guild and since my guild is awesome, we got it done without the Guardian dying and thus having no repair costs etc and I was back to solid ground monetarily.

In addition, I also had the option to dipping into my guild’s shared fund for repairs and travel. Not everybody has that luxury and for them, buying expensive mats from the Trading Post to level crafting is just not an option. Besides, some people just like going out there and hunting for mats themselves.

I do however, realise that some people are better at playing the Trading Post game then others and these people would not like their game spoilt due to increased drop rates.

The low drop rate is really killer right now, as someone who prefers to craft in the name of being self sufficient it’s become not worth it anymore.

For reference I have two characters who are level 40(ish). Both have the crafting profession to make their own armor (tailoring for my necro & leatherworking for my ranger). Today I decided I had better upgrade my necro’s armor as she was still in lvl 25-26 gear. So I went to level up her tailoring to be on par with her level, it wasn’t too bad she could make lvl 30 gear when I last crafted. Leveling up the crafting exhausted my supply of fine materials so when it came time to actually craft her armor I had to go to the TP and spend about 80 silver in order to get what I needed. Now flip over to my ranger, with my fine materials stock relatively depleted there was no way I could afford to upgrade her armor through crafting as well as her leatherworking was sitting about the lvl 30 armor area as well. So I said, “screw this”, sold the rest of my fine materials on the TP made almost 2g within minutes and bought a nice set of lvl 40 armor for around 8s.

Something needs to change if crafting is ever going to be remotely viable either for self sufficiency or for profit. Personally I think, apart from adjusting the drop rates for fine materials, recipes should call for fewer fine materials but more node-gathered materials, at least for low-mid level recipes. This would increase the value of node gathered materials and make crafting more viable all around.

Imo the problem isn’t even the low drop rate of blue crafting mats. It’s not even the fact that even as a cook, I have butter coming out of my ears.

It’s the fact that SO MUCH blue and green gear drops out in the world. Cut that back, and crafted items actually gain some value.

If your defense of the crafting system is that the grinds aren’t as bad as other MMORPG’s, then I really feel like you need to go watch ANet’s Manifesto again. This is an area of the game where even most of the people complaining about the system-as-is are sort of missing the larger point. Why is crafting so grindy and farmy and utimately so similar to what we’ve seen in other MMORPG’s in the past?

Yes, there will always be a threshold below which a grind is considered negligible and inoffensive by the majority of the population, and thus is no longer really a grind. Yes, in the context of a traditional MMORPG everyone getting high-end loot without investing any significant time or effort is a bad thing because it drastically reduces the shelf life of the game.

GW2’s mission statement was to change the underlying assumptions of the genre so that grinds weren’t vital to the longevity of the game, and weren’t the measuring stick by which people assigned value to accomplishments. I know it sounds bombastic, but I’m going to say it anyway: if players are killing any amount of extra monsters anywhere that they otherwise wouldn’t have killed, or repeating any content anywhere that they otherwise would not have repeated, specifically to achieve a long-term goal… that’s a grind, and it runs contrary to the Manifesto.

Right now, PvP really does seem like the area in which GW2 has come closest to achieving the lofty aspirational goals they outlined in their Manifesto. That’s not just a lucky coincidence. It’s an extremely important fact, and it’s worth a lot of exploration and discussion.

PvE, on the other hand, is not even close. Again – not a coincidence. Not just an isolated screwup by Bob down in the mail room. Systemic, foundational, worthy of much discussion.

It seems that there are specific areas for some drops, here are some pics (all only single target weapon setups without the use of utility skills).

poot.5487:

PvE, on the other hand, is not even close. Again – not a coincidence. Not just an isolated screwup by Bob down in the mail room. Systemic, foundational, worthy of much discussion.

There really does need to be SOME effort required, else the craft becomes completely worthless.

My complaint is not primarily about the amount of effort. It’s about the kind of effort. The kind of effort required by crafting currently is of the grind/farm variety. In fact, the game’s PvE content is chock full of that kind of effort.

The amount of grinding/farming required for crafting specifically is – as I stated previously – actually quite a bit less than many other MMORPGs’ crafting systems. I do not find the “lower amount equals better” argument compelling, however.

There are two ways to turn grinding into not-grinding: change the mechanics, or make the grind trivially short and easy. It’s telling that crafting’s defenders are immediately assuming that option #2 is the only option available, is what everyone with a complaint about crafting is suggesting as a solution (even if they don’t ever explicitly say so,) and then reacting against it.

I agree it has gotten ridiculous. Vanilla Bean which is used in everything and is a Chef(25) crafting mater is going for 75-100c (1s) each? That’s more then a lot of the level 300 – 400 ingredients?

I can understand why they would take items off karma and make them drop items but when the drops items don’t drop, how are we supposed to craft anything and make money other than grinding? (Not going to happen.)

The other major bone to pick I have is Vanilla Bean’s off of Herb Seedlings. I have been harvesting Herb Seedlings for the last couple days in several of the starting areas and have only gotten 4 vanilla beans 1 time.

Part of the problem is they have like 10 different materials dropping off Herb Seedlings. I get Garlic, Peppercorn, Thyme … everything under the sun except Vanilla Bean.

So I went from being able to make 35s in an hour to 10 copper. Thanks, but no thanks. -.-

They’ve basically tried to fix one mechanic and severely broken another. I am terribly disappointed. =(

Hopefully at some point the prices on the crafted goods will rise and we can actually make money again but demand will also drop so there will be less money to be made.

Play Dungeon Fighter Online

Try to level enchanting

?

you’d rather level a craft in GW2 100 times over

Comparing this to worse-off games isn’t especially helpful or productive.

The basic problem is that leveling crafting, not even the making of the exotics at the end, is very grindy. You’ll notice that most people who say that the current drop rates are fine in other threads also note that one of the crafts they leveled up is Jeweling. That’s for good reason: Jeweling is significantly easier to level up than other crafts because it uses different fine crafting mats. The big problem is that of the eight crafts, six of them share the most rare and sought after mats. Whoever thought that this was a good idea ought to get a stern talking to.

As it is, it’s almost impossible to level up two crafts to match your level, unless one of those crafts is jeweling or cooking, or if you have a lot of cash to spend on the TP. The kicker, though? Even those that proclaim that the drops are good to encourage sales on the TP aren’t correct either. Right now the fine crafting mats are more expensive than the items that they create, not even including the cost of the common crafting mats. That’s not a healthy economy.

There IS a problem, and all it takes is one casual look at the TP to see that. I don’t know if the solution is to increase the drop rates on the fine crafting mats, to reduce the number required on the pre-80 items, or what, but something needs to happen.

My attitude is that good things take time.

If I want something epic I earn it by putting in the time and effort required, whatever that may be.

Makes the end result so much sweeter.

I would love for the drop rates to be better on the rare crafting mats, but I can honestly say I am enjoying it at this time. Grinding is part of an MMO. We are only in what week 3? I am sure that Anet will adjust things that are a problem. MMO’s take a lot of tweaking to get just right.

poot.5487:

There are two ways to turn grinding into not-grinding: change the mechanics, or make the grind trivially short and easy. It’s telling that crafting’s defenders are immediately assuming that option #2 is the only option available, is what everyone with a complaint about crafting is suggesting as a solution (even if they don’t ever explicitly say so,) and then reacting against it.

What mechanics would you change to make grinding non-grinding?

Drop rates suck. Crafting is not fun. I level way faster than my crafting and it’s just pointless to craft at this juncture. I could go on but why bother we all know crafting just isn’t balanced properly. Make crafting give more points or make drop rates higher to keep up with insanely fast leveling.

Tigger.8035:

Play Dungeon Fighter Online

Try to level enchanting

?

you’d rather level a craft in GW2 100 times over

I’m already level 400, but can’t craft anything but junk people don’t want because the rarity of simple materials that drive costs up to the point you can’t make any money but a few copper here and there.

I don’t think the drop rates are the biggest problem, but rather the amount of blue crafting materials required at each tier. The first tier always requires 3 which isn’t that bad, but then the next tier requires 8 of each more than double! It needs to be lower or at least 1 and 2 at lower level tiers and maybe 3 and 5 at higher tiers.

Tigger.8035:

Play Dungeon Fighter Online

Try to level enchanting

?

you’d rather level a craft in GW2 100 times over

Play EverQuest 2 and level any tradeskill and realize how broken THIS system is. They have a crafting system with far less grind and far more utility. Even LotRO feels less grindy even if their products are mostly vendor trash compared to drops and dungeon/skirmish gear.

“Fine” materials being required for 90% of the recipes above level 0 (in increasing quantities in the tiers) means they should drop far more frequently. EQ2 has rares required in crafting, but there are recipes you can make without them and the ones that require them require ONE per piece (not 3-15). LotRO has single-use recipes requiring rares but again there’s plenty to make without them and those require ONE per piece.

The rares in EQ2 are found almost with the same frequency as “Fine” materials are here. I could make a suit of Blackened Iron Armor with but an hour or two of farming for the rares in EQ2 while an hour or two of grinding for fine materials here might get me enough for one piece of equipment. I can run enough skirmishes in LotRO to purchase almost enough rare shards for a full suit of armor there (yep, can use their skirmish currency to barter for rare drops needed in crafting) in about the same time.

Dolemite.9823:

I would love for the drop rates to be better on the rare crafting mats, but I can honestly say I am enjoying it at this time. Grinding is part of an MMO. We are only in what week 3? I am sure that Anet will adjust things that are a problem. MMO’s take a lot of tweaking to get just right.

My complaint is not “rare” crafting materials, it’s common crafting materials that are impossible to get since they have added them to gather spawns that are already overcrowded with mats.

When you only have a handful of spawns and they drop multiple items it makes it impossible to gather certain materials driving the cost for common low level materials up to level 80 prices.

Rainshine.5493:

What mechanics would you change to make grinding non-grinding?

Excellent question! I have a wide range of ideas. Some of them require fundamental infrastructure that simply does not exist in GW2, and probably doesn’t yet exist in any MMO except possibly EVE Online (not 100% sure, truth be told.) Others don’t require quite as much innovation, but those ideas are much less fun.

Some of the less fun ones:

-Make crafting require a wider range of materials per item that are less RNG-farming-related. Encourage the exploration of a wide variety of zones, killing particularly challenging enemies, putting relatively unique resources nodes at the end of jumping puzzles, etc. etc. In short, make crafting materials a reward for actually doing something beyond just killing a bunch of monsters over and over again plus stacking Magic Find while avoiding the anti-bot code.

Discoveries should either be more involved and mysterious – cooking comes closest so far – or they should be discarded. If they’re discarded, a new system should be instituted whereby there are multiple recipes to craft functionally identical basic weapons or subcomponents, possibly with the different recipes feeding into a formula for different appearances that people would still need to discover (with transmutation always serving as a partial release valve to change butt-ugly models that are easy to make, but not as a shortcut to the best looking custom crafted models.)

Of course, if crafting requires more components, it could get frustrating, unless…

2) Make crafting much more about upgrading and personalization, and less about making 6 Level 30 Greatswords and then making 6 Level 35 Greatswords (5 of which you always vendor or TP or salvage.) If you’re a weaponsmith, there’s no reason that the experience of progressing from level 1 to level 400 couldn’t be about creating a weapon – or set of weapons – that gave you some options about how to customize them (appearance, which stats, choose between more stats and fewer upgrade slots or vice/versa,) that could be augmented and tweaked as you went along. Would making just one of these weapons be enough to get you there? Well, maybe not, but most players are going to want a minimum of two weapons, and possibly 4 or even more.

Not enough smithing to justify such a long journey? Well, let me tell you about:

3) Give every player in GW2, regardless of crafting choices, the ability to possess one “special” crafting item made by another player. If you don’t want to deal with crafting at all, well, fine, there are other ways to get level 80 exotics. However, if you want the customization, you have two options: level up the craft yourself, or hire a crafter, who can then provide you with 1 and only 1 crafted item that would be upgradeable by that crafter and only that crafter all the way up to the level 80 exotic (or hell, even legendary, given competitive requirements) version.

This encourages networks of crafters and friends. It forges (get it?) a longer-term relationship between the guy who really wanted a custom Greatsword and the weaponsmith he chose to make it for him, and a way to upgrade it through the levels.

Mechanically, the custom job items would get a “crafted by [Character Name][(tag)],” and that tag would have a limit of one. One Greatsword by poot, One piece of armor, one piece of jewelery, but not one of each – if it’s one of the custom/upgradeable jobs. Soulbinding would have an exception for that crafter and that crafter alone so that he could refine, rework, and upgrade the weapon.

For crafters themselves, the option should be available to have as many “made by myself” custom items as they want… though possibly only for one profession, or only for their current active professions.

Remember that “basic” items can still be crafted too, just with less choice of stats and baseline appearance. They’d be the meat-and-potatoes items for people who don’t care about special appearances and are fine with one of the predetermined stat combinations, and don’t care about only having one upgrade slot.

However, if you want to wear a full set of custom-job armor, you need to actually remain an armorsmith. If you want to wear a full set of custom jewelry… etc. etc. This encourages even crafters to make friends with other crafters so that, ideally, they can wear an entire set of custom-job equipment, which will not be possible even if they “lock in” two equipment-crafting professions.

These are just a few ideas that would require less – though not no – changes to GW2’s several systems. The more you’re willing to change about the game, the more fun you can have.

You guys haven’t even seen the rate in which tier 6 mat node spawns… Increase mat and fine mats drop, crafting will be sooooo easy that more will reach 400 faster. Then you’ll complain about how hard it is to get mat to craft exotic and ask for increase in drop…then you’ll complain rafting legendary is too hard and ask to increase drop. Then you’ll complain legendary has no value because everyone has one.

There are always some aspect of the game that some will find very difficult, and some will just bite through it as a challenge. As someone in this post says, it makes it all the sweeter when you achieves it. The difficulty is to reward players who puts in effort and or ingenuity.

Uhm… You don’t have to discover all recipes to move to next tier.

Can’t quote last message on page 1 for some reason Oo

i dont understand everyones complaining…

I got up to 375 armorsmith rather easily…

I sold ALL the mats i found as I was leveling. When I hit 80 ( i was at around 200 armorsmithing), I had close to 4 gold waiting for me. I spent about 2 of it getting up to 375.

I need about another 1g to get up to 400…but haven’t done it yet (trying to by silk insignias for half price).

Yesterday I farmed Citadel of Flame all day trying to earn the exotic GS…By the time I was done I made over 12 gold.

Guess what…thats MORE than enough to finish my armosmithing, and in addition, my weaponsmithing.

learn to play the game

poot.5487:

Rainshine.5493:

What mechanics would you change to make grinding non-grinding?

Excellent question! I have a wide range of ideas. Some of them require fundamental infrastructure that simply does not exist in GW2, and probably doesn’t yet exist in any MMO except possibly EVE Online (not 100% sure, truth be told.) Others don’t require quite as much innovation, but those ideas are much less fun.

Some of the less fun ones:

-Make crafting require a wider range of materials per item that are less RNG-farming-related. Encourage the exploration of a wide variety of zones, killing particularly challenging enemies, putting relatively unique resources nodes at the end of jumping puzzles, etc. etc. In short, make crafting materials a reward for actually doing something beyond just killing a bunch of monsters over and over again plus stacking Magic Find while avoiding the anti-bot code.

Discoveries should either be more involved and mysterious – cooking comes closest so far – or they should be discarded. If they’re discarded, a new system should be instituted whereby there are multiple recipes to craft functionally identical basic weapons or subcomponents, possibly with the different recipes feeding into a formula for different appearances that people would still need to discover (with transmutation always serving as a partial release valve to change butt-ugly models that are easy to make, but not as a shortcut to the best looking custom crafted models.)

Of course, if crafting requires more components, it could get frustrating, unless…

2) Make crafting much more about upgrading and personalization, and less about making 6 Level 30 Greatswords and then making 6 Level 35 Greatswords (5 of which you always vendor or TP or salvage.) If you’re a weaponsmith, there’s no reason that the experience of progressing from level 1 to level 400 couldn’t be about creating a weapon – or set of weapons – that gave you some options about how to customize them (appearance, which stats, choose between more stats and fewer upgrade slots or vice/versa,) that could be augmented and tweaked as you went along. Would making just one of these weapons be enough to get you there? Well, maybe not, but most players are going to want a minimum of two weapons, and possibly 4 or even more.

Not enough smithing to justify such a long journey? Well, let me tell you about:

3) Give every player in GW2, regardless of crafting choices, the ability to possess one “special” crafting item made by another player. If you don’t want to deal with crafting at all, well, fine, there are other ways to get level 80 exotics. However, if you want the customization, you have two options: level up the craft yourself, or hire a crafter, who can then provide you with 1 and only 1 crafted item that would be upgradeable by that crafter and only that crafter all the way up to the level 80 exotic (or hell, even legendary, given competitive requirements) version.

<snip>

In regards to this suggestion:

I followed up until the 1 crafting piece per player thing? I think you need to refine that idea. For instance, what if that player stops playing the game? Are you screwed?

Anyway, in regards to your suggestion about spreading out nodes. I agree wholeheartedly.

Drastically improve crafting recipes. Allow you to make a base item (Example: exotic greatsword). Then allow you to use rarer ingrediants that change manipulate the base stats and the look.

Those ingredients, or the ingredients that make up those ingredients should be hard to find, or hard to earn.

It’s kind of like how WoW allowed specialization in professions. It reduces the amount of the ‘same’ items that are being made and allows the crafter to create a smaller supply of more demanded items, and thus make a profit.

@Teemoor-no you don’t necessarily need to discover all recipes to get your skill to level 400. But for some of us, it’s not about how fast you can get your skill to 400. Personally I’m a major stickler when it comes to getting all the crafting recipes for my trade. Likewise, being a guardian doesn’t help my cause much either, as I’m able to fill all three niche rolls for grouping, dps, tanky mele, and support, meaning I’ll need a wide variety of gear. But mostly, It’s because I’m not just leveling this craft just for this toon. It’s also for every other toon that comes after it that can use it. But your correct in that I’m probably going to have to just focus on only 3 or so specific recipes for now till I can come back later to learn the others. At least if I want to get it to where I can make gear for my current level.

The issue is not the drop rate but how fast the leveling is. I tried to keep my crafting up w/ my level and in turn i never was in a level appropriate area, for me this was fine but i can see how this bothers other people. This also plays havoc to the resale of crafted items; why spend any money on any gear when in 48 hours you ave out weighed it. I think it would make more sense to make 1-400 easier to level, and add more variety at level 400.

Rev.

I think some people are missing what the actual concern is here. It’s not about rushing to 400 and capping just so we can get our completionist jollies off (well, maybe it’s that for a select few), but for most it’s about actually being able to utilize the gear we craft and efficiently keep our professions on par with our character level.

Right now it’s too grindy, and the fine crafting materials required for anything are way out of line. On top of that, it’s not like we can go and flip these items for a profit, they are strictly for our own use (or others if we feel gracious enough), and that is why it’s so frustrating. I could see these being hard items to craft if I could turn around and get double or triple the value, and that should probably be the case for level 80 items, items that have some staying power, but not blues that we’re probably just going to use as stepping stones until we can craft better stuff.

I mean, if we can’t have gear progression through our crafts while we’re leveling, then what is the point? I guess that would mean leveling professions is just a time sink until we get to 400 where we can finally have access to worthy end-game items. Doesn’t that go against ANets end-game pitch entirely though? What happened to the entire game being the end-game?

I don’t mean to banter on and on, I really love this game so far. To me, this game has improved so much of the typical MMO grindiness, and that’s what I love about it most. That’s also why I’m so confused that crafting doesn’t fit the mold. It’s not fun, it’s frustrating mostly. Why should it be so difficult to craft basic leveling gear? Again, if we were crafting high demand end-game gear, the difficulty would make sense, but as it stands, the output doesn’t match the time or money input, and that is the issue.

Revrent.2459:

I think it would make more sense to make 1-400 easier to level, and add more variety at level 400.

Exactly.

Hell, I’d go on a 2 week quest to craft a level 80 legendary and be totally fine with it as long as it was an awesome item. That would be fun and rewarding.

I don’t, however, have fun spending a grip of my time grinding out random and very scarce mats just to craft a junk piece that probably won’t get used, because by the time I actually had the mats to make it, I’d already out-leveled it.

I just want dyes.

the game needs an actual ‘farming’ profession where you can grow cookables, and for other professions even cotton for sewing things; as it stands the game is likely to correct itself

I think it has been mentioned but I think the problem can be traced back to how much stuff needs to be crafted to level up the professions.

The way I see it, many people are producing lots and lots of crafting products. This makes the supply stupidly large, even though people actually aren’t making these items to sell. This makes prices on the trading post no better than selling to a vendor.

In addition, all those products need lots and lots of crafting materials (especially the fine materials), meaning the demand on the crafting materials is very high, which coupled with low drop rates makes the price very high. The overall situation makes for a very sad crafting experience.

So, what if you didn’t need anywhere near the number of products crafted to level the profession up? Well, you would have far less products on the trading post – possibly enough to make the supply & demand reach a reasonable equilibrium.

The crafting materials demand will be much lower because less products are needed to be made. This means the price on them will fall to more reasonable levels.

The result should be a much better crafting experience.

400 Cooking 400 Huntsman here.

Glad I got my cooking to 400 before the patches, but only because I’m lazy – it was by far the easiest thing I’ve done craftwise. Buying mats for karma made it very easy to work with a spreadsheet from google and just plow through the many discoveries, gaining a ton of EXP in the first few days since the launch. Moreover, my guildies who were levelling with me didnt not need their food mats and traded me for my extra mats, like cloth. In short, I think I had 400 cooking a soon as I was able to farm the areas with the necessary mats. It gave too much exp to me for no reason, too fast – I was 80 and still in the lvl 60-70 areas of the story. Cooking needed the patch.

Huntsman feels right to me in terms of difficulty. There were times I had to go back and farm animals for blue mats, you know, like a huntsman… This felt appropriate and I never had to farm more than an hours worth of blue mats to get to the next tier (it was the 8 per item that always slowed me down). Eventually I made my way to 400, but it happened about a week after I hit 80. I had just enough 400 mats to craft one exotic rifle, and I did – I could have sold it, but I decided to use it since the valuation wasnt much higher than the mats themselves.

That is to say, the profit simply wasnt there. I can’t see myself making money off crafting gear for others, when the margins are mere silvers and eventually everyone can craft the gear themselves. Cooking will get you no money endgame – all the finished products outside the trays of food and the magic find food sell for coppers. Ill be cooking to use the buffs myself and crafting my own gear, and that, it seems, will be that.

TL;DR Cooking needed the nerf – Huntsman felt like a hunting man – neither profession pays out at 400

frOst.2198:

o this suggestion:

I followed up until the 1 crafting piece per player thing? I think you need to refine that idea. For instance, what if that player stops playing the game? Are you screwed?

Anyway, in regards to your suggestion about spreading out nodes. I agree wholeheartedly.

Drastically improve crafting recipes. Allow you to make a base item (Example: exotic greatsword). Then allow you to use rarer ingrediants that change manipulate the base stats and the look.

Those ingredients, or the ingredients that make up those ingredients should be hard to find, or hard to earn.

It’s kind of like how WoW allowed specialization in professions. It reduces the amount of the ‘same’ items that are being made and allows the crafter to create a smaller supply of more demanded items, and thus make a profit.

You’re correct. If the person stops playing, then that item is no longer tweakable, upgradeable, or customizable.

In order for things to matter, there need to be risks and downsides. Finding a crafter who seems reliable, consistent, and has playing hours that match yours would actually be important. It would demand that players actually interact with each other, get to know each other, and even develop reputations on servers.

The net cost of choosing a crafter who quits the game would be unfortunate but not catastrophic. It would be one item that you would need to replace if you wanted a better/different version of the customizable, crafted item, but you could always simply revert to one of the stock loot/craft/karma/dungeon items in the interim. Since you’re limited to one item per crafter, you literally cannot put all of your eggs into one basket, which means that you’ll never be totally and utterly screwed if one of your crafters turns out to be unreliable.

I would like to add something to this thread that I think may help some people in the short run. I have 5 professions to 400, most were however leveled before the changes to the cooking where the the new items were added to the loot tables. Early on in the game, I’d say around level 30, my guildies and I decided to make and stockpile two different sets of gear, one with the stats of your choosing and one with MF% (magic find).

Now from my understanding on how MF% works in this game, it not only amplifies your chance of any loot on the mob, lets say in theory thats around 15 percent. And with a full set of low level MF and a Tart(MF food) you can easily get to about 150% MF. So in this case your base chance is 15% and you now have 150% extra MF, essentially giving you 37% MF (assuming they are additive). Which I believe is quite a significant boost.

However the downside to this is the “unconfirmed” anti-farm scripting in this game. Which basically boils down to the fact that the longer you stay farming something the lower the drop rates on those mobs would be AND the lower the chances of getting worthwhile drops from those mobs.

A little bit of data:
Hours farming frost trolls in Frostgorge Sound in hopes of Powerful Blood and Potent Blood.
(All data is with 210% MF)
Hour 1: 23 Potent Bloods/7 Powerful/ 21 Large Bones/5 Ancient Bones/10 Blues/6 Greens/2 Rares
Hour 2: 11 Potent Bloods/3 Powerful/ 15 Large Bones/1 Ancient Bones/6 Blues/3 Greens/0 Rares
Hour 3: 8 Potent/1 Powerful/ 9 Large Bones/ 0 Ancient/ 4 Blues/1 Green/0 Rares
(This is where it gets dismal)
Hour 4: 1 Potent/0 Powerful/2 Large Bones/0 Ancient/1 Blue/0 Greens/0 Rares.

Sorry for the wall of text, just hoping that some of this information can be used to help people. Gather some of those “rare”(too rare i think) to level their professions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/R-I-P-Drop-Rate/148040

Now from my understanding on how MF% works in this game, it not only amplifies your chance of any loot on the mob, lets say in theory thats around 15 percent. And with a full set of low level MF and a Tart(MF food) you can easily get to about 150% MF. So in this case your base chance is 15% and you now have 150% extra MF, essentially giving you 37% MF (assuming they are additive). Which I believe is quite a significant boost.

However the downside to this is the “unconfirmed” anti-farm scripting in this game. Which basically boils down to the fact that the longer you stay farming something the lower the drop rates on those mobs would be AND the lower the chances of getting worthwhile drops from those mobs.

A little bit of data:
Hours farming frost trolls in Frostgorge Sound in hopes of Powerful Blood and Potent Blood.
(All data is with 210% MF)
Hour 1: 23 Potent Bloods/7 Powerful/ 21 Large Bones/5 Ancient Bones/10 Blues/6 Greens/2 Rares
Hour 2: 11 Potent Bloods/3 Powerful/ 15 Large Bones/1 Ancient Bones/6 Blues/3 Greens/0 Rares
Hour 3: 8 Potent/1 Powerful/ 9 Large Bones/ 0 Ancient/ 4 Blues/1 Green/0 Rares
(This is where it gets dismal)
Hour 4: 1 Potent/0 Powerful/2 Large Bones/0 Ancient/1 Blue/0 Greens/0 Rares.

Sorry for the wall of text, just hoping that some of this information can be used to help people. Gather some of those “rare”(too rare i think) to level their professions.

Yep, that confirms what I’ve been seeing. After 1-2 hours, you’re better off logging out than banging your head trying to get yellow drops for ecto’s.

Such a profound disappointment that ArenaNet chose this horrific idea over all the better ideas available. This is all they could come up with in 5 years? A real shame.

this is very unfortunate news after browsing the forum to try and find a solution for my crafting skills being in a state of perpetual staleness. Trying to level Leatherworking and Weaponsmithing at the same time is absolutely killing me, I dont know how to keep up with the demand for rare mats! I have already dinged 80 and i still am stuck around 125ish for both professions… im pretty sad with this crafting system at the moment. The discovery method is fun but the materials you need to craft are just way too rare!

frOst.2198:

i dont understand everyones complaining…

I got up to 375 armorsmith rather easily…

I sold ALL the mats i found as I was leveling. When I hit 80 ( i was at around 200 armorsmithing), I had close to 4 gold waiting for me. I spent about 2 of it getting up to 375.

I need about another 1g to get up to 400…but haven’t done it yet (trying to by silk insignias for half price).

Yesterday I farmed Citadel of Flame all day trying to earn the exotic GS…By the time I was done I made over 12 gold.

Guess what…thats MORE than enough to finish my armosmithing, and in addition, my weaponsmithing.

learn to play the game

That’s the problem, crafting is actually really hard if you don’t have money. Now, it’s easy to make money so what’s the problem? Why is everyone complaining? Because crafting being easy isn’t the problem, crafting being useless is the problem.

I myself want to make a profit from crafting, at the current state of the economy, this is not possible. By crafting at all, by using money to invest in crafting resources, I am spending more money than I would have if I had just bought the item I wanted to craft on the trading post. So, if you want to make a significant profit, you should gather the materials to craft the items, right? Wrong. It takes waaaayyyy too long. If I want to make money, I can spend less than half the time grinding events to make 5 gold, than I would spend gathering mats to create rares that would sell for 5 gold.

It’s not about crafting being too hard, I want gathering materials to be WORTH THE GRIND. It’s not. I can grind events to get gold to buy gear that costs less than crafting gear of the same value.

Major rune of traveler ( 4/4 ) + Major rune of pirate ( 2/4) + magic +% in weapons, trinkets and i use a nourishment as well. My build is focused on farming for my crafting which i love. I have lot of experience in every zone with all mats and crafting. Some areas have better drop rates some very low. I like to experiment and survey areas.
The strangest thing was when i hit 80 and farming areas 75-80. For 2 hrs i had literally about 10 drops, 2 where blue items and rest trophies. I know that they have nerfed the drops but this is really rediculus. As i couldnt do events as i was the only one around i chose to farm today. I understand the fight against gold sellers and i back you up guys 100%. But many players like the economy in the game and you ruin it for us.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll go ahead and say it again. I’ve been leveling my crafting with my level, to keep up. Sure, it isn’t what most people do, but it’s logical. Make your own gear, as you go. But if you do this, you’ll be punished for it. Severely. At first you only need 18 fine ingredients to make 6 pieces of armor, but every time you hit the (master) level of that tier, it jumps to 48 instead of 18. Add to that what you need for your weapons (8 ingredients per weapon, some classes get off light if they use mostly two-handed weapons, but still…). It takes 96 for my thief. After going through this a few times, I wanted to shoot myself in the face and die, and never see Guild Wars 2 again. The mindless killing things over and over again to gather these things up takes many, many hours. It’s the worst part of the game, by far, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Im not sure what all the fuss is about with crafting materials, I’d got 1 level 80 character, and 3 alts that are all <level 5. Yet have managed to level 3 crafts to 400 skill without spending a single copper on the trade post other than to for a bit of copper ore at the start.

All the fine crafting materials I had gathered over my 300 hour play time was more than enough to get my craft skills capped. Infact im already making a start on craft number 4

Do I farm daily, yes, but I never stick to the same mobs for more than 10 minutes and constantly move around. My usual route covers the entire left and top edges of Frostsound Gorge.

At the end of a 30 minute session I usually end up with 3-4 high value fine materials and occasionally a Corrupted Lodestone or two.

You know what my favorite thing about this thread is ? No one mentions their MF or lack there of.

I think there are two fixes. Obviously the first one is to increase the drop rate of FCMs. It’s ridiculous, and the more you try to farm the lower the drop rate goes, which requires you to farm more, which lowers the drop rate more (Anybody see a cycle?)

The other one that I haven’t seen mentioned (I didn’t read ALL the comments) is to increase the stats of crafted materials. Right now most people are getting their gear from drops. My toon leveled up way faster than my crafting did so I’m level 80 making level 30 armor. Talk about a freakin waste.

I absolutely love crafting and the crafting system that ANet has, but there has to be something down about this drop rate.

Badsituation.6125:

You know what my favorite thing about this thread is ? No one mentions their MF or lack there of.

And why should someone be forced to wear full magic find gear just to be able to keep their crafts equivalent to their level during the leveling process?

Why does everyone in this thread seem to insist upon the fact that the only way you can get what you need is by grinding mobs for it? shakes head

You have to understand that if you want to level while you craft AS THE GAME IS RELEASED then you are going to have a rather interesting time doing so without costing you more in the long run.

Feywray.4351:

cont

I dinged level 62 today. I started out at level 59 yesterday. So in two days, I’ve farmed 3 high levels on noob exp. or basically HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of exp in noob’s land Queensdale, JUST to grind out the mats for the second tier of armorsmithing, and as you can see, I’m not even half done yet. (This doesn’t include the levels I ground out farming the copper for the first tier.) If this was a fresh toon, I would have easily spent the first 20 levels grinding out these mats, if not more. So this tells me two things. One, there’s no way in hell you’re going to keep your profession up to speed with your character level. Even if all you did was grind mats and learn new recipies, I still don’t think you could do it. So the only reason you have to learn a tradeskill is for the benefit of gearing up a later toon, or because of the gear you’re able to make at 80. Since I haven’t concerned myself much yet with what’s at level 80, idk if that to be true or not. Second, learning your professions is a MASSIVE grind. FAR more of a grind than it ever was in WoW. At least in WoW, you could ‘shortcut’ the skillups just by learning basic recipes and making the easiest items, and worry about getting all the fluff recipes at the end. Since you always had to wait to get to the next zone before you could farm the mats you needed for the gear level you were going to be while in that zone, your gear always lagged about 10 levels behind you. But at least you still had enough time to run around and do quests, dungeons etc. Here, I don’t see you keeping it anywhere NEAR your level, and you definitely wouldn’t have time to do anything else other than grind and craft. So yes, the tradeskills are nothing but one big massive grindfest.

That’s because you have absolutely no concept of opportunity cost.