Guild Wars 2

Cross-post from another thread, but it occurred to me that the thought’s still valid.

Nerelith.7360:

The sad part is, seeing the potential of crafting, and Not seeing ANet get even close to it. It’s simply another part of the game that could have been awesome, and is Bland and generic.

Sad, but true. The discovery system is nothing more than a little pattern detection puzzle, and it’s only marginally fun on Cooking. Marginally. Having the “what can I make now?” question and ending up with 15 varieties of zucchini WTFness at least gave me a laugh.

Beyond that, it’s a standard MMO crafting system with little customizability. The parts that are customizable end up gated by rare materials that come from special events or by breaking materials already of that type, looking at you Dire and Sentinel.

This makes crafting nonsensical. Some components you need to get by bizarrely WTF means or pay out several gold from the trading post. And even if you do have the components, and you’ve proven via discovery you’re capable of simple pattern detection… NOPE, still can’t make it, because that version requires a recipe, even though every other one of its grade and type do not. Celestial, guilty as charged.

FF14 and WildStar have much more robust crafting systems.

And to echo Nerelith’s other note, what do you do with items you can make, besides fulfill ANet’s desire to have a goldsink in the Trading Post?

Again, FF14 and WildStar have been much more forward-thinking about craft and trade. You can turn materials and products in to specific game vendors and quest givers, in exchange for special currencies.

Something like that could have corrected the trade market without the excessive Ascended crafting (yes, I mean silk) and given crafters something to do after they’ve made their best-in-slot gear.

Those same crafters can make other fun toys as well, or, y’know, housing decor. Even WoW has craft-only mounts and pets and toys and parachutes. …What? I like my glider-cape.

Point is, the crafting process is flat. The crafting results are flat. While they could have made great strides toward a high quality (FF14 pun, kitten ) system, instead, we got a typically-generic MMO crafting system with a bit of an XP bonus on the end of it.

Normally, I try to find solutions instead of just posting gripes, but I don’t think there is one here that isn’t a total redesign of the entire crafting system. Which, honestly, needs a good razing.

yeah the only reason i even level up some crafting skills is because of the achievement points, otherwise i find it boring and too expensive for so very little rewards. it was a real shame coming back after like a year and seeing that they didn’t add anything cosmetic and fun to them.

hear, hear!

/15char

While I have to agree on some level about crafting, that it could use more varity, and the use of some recipes over discovery. But I do see WHY you would need a recipe for “special” items rather then randomly discovering a certain unique sword.

However, I will say this (as I do when I see othe games compared to this one, and how it should be more like them) This is not those games. Anet certainly had the option to make something similar to how other games do it, but they chose not to. Changing it now will cause more problems than its worth.

pdavis.8031:

While I have to agree on some level about crafting, that it could use more varity, and the use of some recipes over discovery. But I do see WHY you would need a recipe for “special” items rather then randomly discovering a certain unique sword.

However, I will say this (as I do when I see other games compared to this one, and how it should be more like them) This is not those games. Anet certainly had the option to make something similar to how other games do it, but they chose not to. Changing it now will cause more problems than its worth.

A recipe for a legendary-level weapon I can understand. And the Ascended ones, since they don’t follow the typical pattern and have a lot of investment, otherwise.

But for Celestial? The only difference is the type of insignia/inscription. Dire and Sentinel are also pointlessly inconsistent with the rest of crafting.

But again, best we can do is shrug and accept it, because a complete overhaul of crafting is too much investment for something players aren’t exactly bawling over. Best we can really muster for rage is a stern “I’m disappointed in you, ANet.”

crafting was designed as a way to guarantee for players that hate RNG or hate dungeons gear drops, not as a way to make profit out of it.

It’s not about the profit for me. I can do profit by farming materials and running dungeons. The problem I see is the purpose and role it serves. It’s little more than an XP battery or best-in-slot gear generator. I’ve less a problem with the latter, as I’ve always felt crafting should have that purpose, with rare materials being found behind other content like dungeons.

It’s just disappointing to see that crafting was as much of an afterthought to the game as PvP was. But then again, that’s most MMOs. /shrug

I’ve had a co-worker mention this same sort of thing, that they don’t like the crafting. I’m still trying to really understand what people’s expectations are that they don’t like it in GW2.

You collect materials and make things. Some things you can sell to other players and make some money. You can make lots of different things, most of which you could care less about. The act of crafting itself is not interesting- you click a button and wait for a progress bar to fill up.

The above description pretty much fits every MMO I’ve ever played, so why is the GW2 version the `bad` one?

That being said, I have seen cool things in other MMOs, but I don’t count their absence as a slight on GW2. I liked how in Ultima Online it marked items with `Crafted by [Your Name Here]` when you were at max level for the craft. You could also craft gobs more stuff there, but that game included player housing, so you had a need for more varieties of stuff. In YAHOO Puzzle Pirates, to craft items, you actually have to play a mini-game with a vague association with whatever it is you are trying to make. If you want to produce an elite item, you need to demonstrate an elite performance in the mini-game. I liked this a lot since it makes the actual act of crafting fun, but I haven’t seen this feature in any other MMO, so again, I don’t disparage GW2 for not doing it.

I use http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Pile_of_Salt_and_Pepper to counter the blandness.