Guild Wars 2

So, we’ve all capped our crafting disciplines. We’ve flooded the market with finished goods. We’ve made those supplying raw materials a fair bit of coin. We’ve discovered every recipe there is to discover. We’ve made ourselves more consumables than we’ll ever need. We’ve done just about everything we can possibly do at a crafting station. That leaves one question…where do we go from here?

Scenario 1
ArenaNet can keep the cap of 400 in place and just add more recipes. This could give more options to players leveling alts. And it could give sideways progression for players already donning exotic armor. But with more and more ascended items coming into play, would anyone really even care? This could work with cooking if fishing and corresponding seafood recipes are added, but I’m not sure about anything else.

Scenario 2
ArenaNet could keep the cap of 400 in place and add Legendary cosmetic skins only available through crafting. But with so many people sitting on capped crafting disciplines, this would be old news after about a day unless the required materials are made to be very difficult to obtain. And difficult to obtain crafting materials will no doubt lead to anti-grind complaints.

Scenario 3
ArenaNet could raise the cap beyond 400 and add new tiers of crafting materials and equipment. But what would this mean for materials like orichilium and ancient lumber? And it also means almost all existing equipment for which people have invested time and money becomes more or less obsolete in the blink of an eye.

Scenario 4
ArenaNet could implement some kind of crafting specialization system. This system would reward players for choosing to specialize in one (or a few) crafting discipline. This would (theorhetically) reduce supply while increasing demand for high-end equipment. But I’m not sure how, or even if, such a system could be implemented without punishing players who have invested a great deal of time and/or money capping more than one crafting disciplines?

Scenario 5
ArenaNet could implement entirely new crafting disciplines. We’ve already got everything (weapons, armor, trinkets, and consumables) covered, so outside of furniture for player and guild housing, I don’t know what they could add without doing so for the sake of doing so.

So what direction do you guys think crafting will take going forward? Which of the above scenarios sound most plausible? Or did I miss an obvious one?

I’m going to take the lack of responses as a “we haven’t thought much about the future of crafting”, as opposed to “we don’t care about the future of crafting”.

Hehe, I really like crafting and your 5th scenario really caught my interest. It would be really nice indeed if ArenaNet were to introduce fresh disciplines probably covering other things. (Hopefully the ability to make furniture for housing)

Also, the 4th scenario is pretty cool to implement in-game, it gives more variety and spice in the crafting feature of the game.

Your other scenarios got me too but I prefer the 4th and 5th so anyways, I hope Anet will implement this in the future.

Nice ideas mate

+1 on suggestion

My biggest suggestion for the future of crafting:

1: More crafting recipies that use account bound drops. This breaks down the “cost of goods vs cost of mats” aspect of crafting. Go run Fractals for a Vial of Condensed Mists Essence, and then craft something with it instead of using the mystic forge for it. It means crafters have to source their own mats and that’s a good thing.

2: Add the ability to craft ascended gear. I’m even 100% behind the recipe requiring things like the condensed mist essence, pristine fractal relics, dungeon tokens, what have you. The point is, crafting becomes less relevant if it cannot produce the top tier of gear.

I don’t think you need to add crafting levels for either of those, and I would argue that if you made people level crafting from, say, 400 – 500 to produce Ascended gear, all you would do is kill the market for things produced with 400 crafting as people spam craft those things to level crafting to 500.

A dynamic tournament cookout / alcohol event.

Why think of the future of crafting, if the current system is pretty useless. Yes I have maxed all professions. When I play a twink, I buy gear from the broker because it is way cheaper and most times better than anything I could craft. Useless system if you ask me. And yes, I got that before I maxed all profession, because I like crafting. Nonetheless, until they fix the usefulness, I don’t care much about the future.

Though I do like Scenario 5, I already know my future for crafting.
Assuming I level 2 crafting disciplines for each character to cover it all, I’d then start using the crafting for vanity reasons.

Yes I could purchase all my stuff on the trading post, but that’s not my style and I don’t get that little rush by purchasing things. I like knowing that the stuff I’ve collected does go to a goal even if it isn’t a money-wise decision.

So everything will be scrutinized on my characters: Looks, stats, and even the colors. When all of my characters are done I will randomly award people level equivelant stuff on the maps as a way of thanking them or just clearing out inventory space.
I’ll sell off the stuff I don’t want to randomly distribute on the Trading House.
Then I might pop into a guild, say hi, drop off all sorts of food/trinkets/dyes/etc then leave the guild.

This is all assuming I have the Legendaries I want after all.

Though like I said earlier, #5 sounds fun if we ever get housing set up properly. I would love to craft out things to hallmark the events of my adventures or even just for showing off purposes.

I think if they wanted to put some life support on crafting for the time being to extend it’s usefulness, they should let us craft special (craftsman transmutation stones) that differ from the other transmute stones in that they only allow for transfer of skins, not stats. They would require max crafting level, most likely some rare material (just not something ridiculous like karka shells or some mist essence out of fractals or other such ridiculousness).

One other idea that plays off my one above, and I’m not even sure if this is possible at all, but a bundle package, where we can craft some armor and include the crafters transmute stones with it and sell it as a bundle. That would require some new crafting skins though, because most people are sick to death of the current ones.

DonQ.4056:

A dynamic tournament cookout / alcohol event.

Not a bad idea! That’s sure to keep people interested for a long time (Probably!)

DonQ.4056:

A dynamic tournament cookout / alcohol event.

Anet. Drop everything you are doing and do this instead. I’ll send you money.

At this point, if the removed insignias from all dropped weapons/armor (give them all random Diablo-like stats) so that crafters had a niche, over time crafters would be in demand again.