Guild Wars 2

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.

One of the few here that truly gets it.

Rainshine.5493:

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.

You are still going to have a massive amount of people crafting to level and cheapening the value of your goods so you’ve solved nothing unfortunately.

Specteral.9740:

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.

So stop trying to farm beans, farm something else that makes you far more money and purchase them. Problem solved.

EricGORE.7896:

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.

If you REALLY, REALLY have to “grind” out there for your rare items, then go mine copper, sell it for 20c a pop and then buy your rare materials you cannot afford – this will ensure you can keep crafting yourself gear as you wish.

If you increase the drop rate for the rarer materials then you are having a much wider impact on the economy because this in turn affects all other prices up the supply chain. I do not feel this is the solution.

If anything they could reduce the requirement of some of the materials for some recipes but I don’t have enough data to say why they would want to make this change.

jwburks.9735:

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.

You aren’t being punished for playing this way. You are seeing the inevitably results of an economy where the rare materials are… well, rare.

Ethics.4519:

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.

If this thread hadn’t noticed by now, ANet’s system encourages exploration. The anti-farm code encourages changing location. So you know what I do. I go exploring and I kill, destroy, farm and maim everything I feel like doing this to.

I recently liquidated all the collectibles I had gathered and didn’t need from 0-80. Some I WILL need one day but I want gold to have a cushion in case something is needed… and it netted me almost 7g.

This game is clearly not designed to have you stand in the same spot for a certain length of time and try to chase after one specific materials with a material amount of success past that length of time.

Stop treating this like every other MMO and expand your minds – go explore. If you want to talk about ANet stating this would be a new MMO experience then respond as if it is true, because it is.

The game is designed to be explored, sure.

But you get charged 1-4 silver every time you change location and rarely make that back. There’s just no positive return for doing anything long term in the game.

But you get charged 1-4 silver every time you change location and rarely make that back. There’s just no positive return for doing anything long term in the game.

Then clearly you are doing something wrong if you cannot make that back.

weak blood was never hard to get to begin with, even after post-patch.

Let me tell you one thing.
Harpies.
Plains of ashford.

that is all.
Maybe it’s tiny poison sacs you need? pay a visit in caledon forest.
Bit of everything? Flame legion in plains again.
Thats as much as i know, its always been a tough job to get other crafting materials regardless of patches. Although bones comes aplenty for me.

As crafting is one of the most important aspects of a game for me, I usually build my own gear – which usually worked well in a lot of games so far.

Well it doesn’t work for ME (obviously I’m the only one – but I can live with that) in GrindWars 2.

I’m now close to L35 trying to finally be able to make my L30 gear. I hardly do anything else besides trying to farm small claws/blood/venomsacks/….. No need to do any quests/wvw or whatever… grinding for the gear yields enough experience – too much actually IMHO. The only thing it doesn’t yield is FUN.

Soon I am at the point where I need 8 instead of 3 rares. Ok, I can buy 6×8 armor rares + 2×8 weapon rares = 64 items – for, lets say 1s each on the market… I hardly have that much money. Grinding some other stuff to get the money so I don’t need to grind the rares, doesn’t really sound as an huge improvement for me.

In addition it’s also a bit frustrating that all crafted armor of one tier looks the same so far, but at least it looks nice for light armor compared to heavy. The easiest way would just be to stop crafting and buy karma gear while questing… looks also much prettier than the crafted one. But as I already mentioned, crafting is very important for me (just imagine a huge pvp fan in a game with no pvp).

Ok, as it seems I’m the only one with that problem I wish you all a lot of fun… I’m now happily back to building gear, ships and houses in Vanguard. And no, I keep my stuff in case ANet decides to adapt the crappy crafting to the good looking rest of the game.

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.

This

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.

And this.

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

Yes I understand full well what opportunity cost is. The problem is, I’m still gaining levels faster by grinding money, than I can level the crafting skill. To put it bluntly, there’s only three reasons to take a crafting skill. Either you’re able to level it up on par with your level so you can craft the gear you need as you need it while leveling. You can craft the best items at end game, giving them a high and inevitable demand by everyone, or because you can make money with it.

So far, no matter how I try and do it, I just can’t grind either mats, or the money for the mats, fast enough to keep up with my level. The fact that you get exp, really good exp, just for crafting doesn’t make this any easier. It’s perfectly fine if I don’t make money of the items I craft, as that’s just considered part of the cost for learning the craft, as long as I can make items I can use while leveling as that is my reward. If this isn’t able to be accomplished, then you have to be able to make money from the crafting profession. The crafting profession has to have at least a certain minimum amount of recipes at various levels that are valued by the classes so that they will be interested in having them made. If this is the case, then leveling the profession as you’re leveling is a moot point. You just worry about making some cash, pay to have another crafter make the items for you when you reach that level, and then level the profession later after you reach cap. Conversely, or in conjunction with above, the profession must be able to make craftable items that are in demand at end game. Either because they are the best items attainable in the game, or because it has niche items, or items that fulfill a certain role, that are not attainable any where else in the game. (Resist gear during classic WoW is a prime example of this) If at least one of the above conditions aren’t met, then there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to take a crafting profession. Players aren’t going to go through the hassle of learning a profession without some form of reward.

For those of you saying the economy is out of balance…

The profession being profitable from a perspective of cost of mats verses resale value of items made; in my experience, I find that rarely ever to to be the case. It’s really a simple matter of supply vs. demand and inflation. You can make a case that since there’s so many lower levels in the game right now supplying the market with materials, a fresh economy with very few players with an influx of cash to spend, the prices of mats and the resale of items made are out of balance. But even later on, this will never change, as the factors driving the imbalance now, will not only still exist, but be magnified later on by inflation. In fact, if anything, the price of mats will increase dramatically more than the resale value of the items made.

For example, when I rolled my first toon in WoW, the price of a stack of copper bars was going for 5-10 silver per stack. Five years later when I stopped playing, stacks of copper bars were going for 20-40 gold per stack. You could easily fund a toon with the money you first made off of the gathering professions in the first 20 levels, to last you all the way till end game. The reason? Two things; simple inflation for one. When I first started playing I was on a new server. Like here, there was very few people that had extra money to blow. Right now, there’s very very few players that have a bag with gold coins listed in the bottom of it. Especially gold coins that aren’t assigned to be used for a specific upgrade. So as for now, Copper ore is going for 20-30 copper per piece, which in this economy now, is quite a bit. In about a year or two, after the economy is established and there’s far more 80s running around and most players have one, and the money that an 80 can make. THis means there will be a lot more cash available then there is right now in the economy, and there will be more players with disposable cash then there are now. However, don’t expect the ratio of the cost of mats vs craftable items to even out. If anything, it will get wider.

Which brings us to reason number two; players will always value the availability of mats over the limited usefulness of a piece of gear. No one wants to go out and farm the mats to increase their crafting profession. Being able to just buy the mats off the TP to power level crafting will always be preferred to farming them, so the demand will always be high, and it will always be there. The people that supply these mats know this, and as more and more people acquire more and more disposable gold, they’re going to want it, so they’re going to charge more for the mats knowing you’re going to pay it to avoid farming them. For the crafter on the other hand, there’s only so much value a person is going to have for a piece of gear they’re going to replace in 10 levels or less, so the earning potential is always going to be in favor of the farmer. So this only leaves craftable items that are valued at end game where they can’t be out leveled, and the only way they can fulfill this role, is if they’re either niche gear, that can’t be farmed any other way, or simply because they’re the b.i.s. (best in slot) items in the game. If none of this proves true, and you can’t craft your gear on demand as you level up, then there simply is just no reason to take a crafting profession at all.

In fact, now that I think about it, even if the gear IS the best in the game at 80, outside of crafting it for yourself, there is no reason for anyone to buy the gear from you. Consider this. For example, in WoW, there where 8-10 professions you could choose from, including the three gathering professions. However, you could only take 2 professions. If you dropped a profession, you lost everything with it, so no matter what, you’re profession maintained value simply because there were a limited amount of people that had your profession, and if you wanted something crafted from a profession you didn’t have, you had to find someone with that profession to craft that item for you, therefor creating demand. In GW2 there is no such demand. Every toon can learn all the professions, so in reality, there really won’t be a demand for a craftable item, because you can just learn the profession yourself since you can learn all the professions, you’ll eventually never need another crafter.

I think I just talked myself out of even bothering with my crafting professions till I hit 80, assuming I even need them then. I guess I’ll just farm the gear for the items I want and have someone else just make them. It’s easier and quicker then learning the profession. SMH

"
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?
"

They shouldn’t, and with the current anti-farm code, it wouldn’t help. The anti-farm code eclipses the effectiveness of MF gear within 1 hour max, on any character, in any zone.

MF Gear is a trap. It doesn’t work the way most people think (50% MF on a 1% drop rate is 1.5%) and it doesn’t help at all after 1 hour of play, per day.

Test it yourself, and you’ll see. It’s extremely easy to track, and it’s an absolutely horrible mechanic. However, it is allowing ArenaNet to increase the exchange rate of gems <-> gold, which is the entire point of this game, so good on them for that.

Tekener.3257:

As crafting is one of the most important aspects of a game for me, I usually build my own gear – which usually worked well in a lot of games so far.

Well it doesn’t work for ME (obviously I’m the only one – but I can live with that) in GrindWars 2.

I understand the appeal but it won’t work in this game the way that you want it to.

I’m now close to L35 trying to finally be able to make my L30 gear. I hardly do anything else besides trying to farm small claws/blood/venomsacks/….. No need to do any quests/wvw or whatever… grinding for the gear yields enough experience – too much actually IMHO. The only thing it doesn’t yield is FUN.

That’s because instead of playing the game you have your head in a tunnel – you only want to craft yourself gear, everything else about the game bekitten So you GRIND for items that end up getting their drop rates nerfed as you do so. Eesh. :P No wonder it isn’t fun.

Soon I am at the point where I need 8 instead of 3 rares. Ok, I can buy 6×8 armor rares + 2×8 weapon rares = 64 items – for, lets say 1s each on the market… I hardly have that much money. Grinding some other stuff to get the money so I don’t need to grind the rares, doesn’t really sound as an huge improvement for me.

It doesn’t matter what it sounds like, it matters what the math says. And the math says you can do something else more profitable and afford to craft those items… but you’ll still outlevel your gear you make.

In addition it’s also a bit frustrating that all crafted armor of one tier looks the same so far, but at least it looks nice for light armor compared to heavy. The easiest way would just be to stop crafting and buy karma gear while questing… looks also much prettier than the crafted one. But as I already mentioned, crafting is very important for me (just imagine a huge pvp fan in a game with no pvp).

It’s huge for me too. I was incredibly disappointed I could not make money off of Jewelry but I realized why and then I wasn’t disappointed any more. I moved on to other aspects of the game I enjoy also and I’m having fun with it. :o)

Ok, as it seems I’m the only one with that problem I wish you all a lot of fun… I’m now happily back to building gear, ships and houses in Vanguard. And no, I keep my stuff in case ANet decides to adapt the crappy crafting to the good looking rest of the game.

As is the freedom for all to choose what to play… don’t play anything where it isn’t fun. Sorry this wasn’t fun for you.