Guild Wars 2

It seems everyone I know who is crafting is doing the standad MMO build a whole bunch of the orange and yellow things to level it style work and while we can build faster when making a stack I hate that with so much work put in normal leveling to avoid a grind.

It would be nice to have an alternative.

Maybe if they increased amount of recipies even if some were just graphical options to expan the catalog they would make it unique recipies that increase the level instead of single items. Then if you don’t look at a guide for what exists it’s about experiementing with all the pieces and getting the recipe right. You’d have to make a whole lot of different items and experiement in all the possible things you can make instead of grinding one thing out until it turns green and moving onto the next that seems like more fun.

It’s probably way to late for such a large change to it but they put a lot of work in giving us so many ways to XP in standard level with explore bonuses and craft and hearts and quests and kills that in comparison crafting feels a bit dull.

Ever heard of discovery? Put few pieces in there and see what happens. It rewards you with load of XP and a new recipe. Never level crafting in GW2 like in WoW, use discovery. Period.

I never did wows crafting but I have a feeling I level’ed my cooking like wow, or runescape or rift.

I guess I wish the device between crafting a known item and a new item was bigger is the idea. Less to none for a known item and bigger experience for a new item.

crafting is a grind with little reward. Items are hard to come most are or become useless quickly. I’ll say this for crafting, its a nice XP boost. Still, It becomes to expensive too quickly.

I can see how it might be worth it for jewelery in the long term. That is about it.

I really don’t think that the game overall is not grindy. Its more that they shifted the focus away from level grinding and made it more about gold and Karma grinding. Add in diminishing rewards for events and its worse.

plus they level scale you. So I have to battle creatures that are far under my level while the XP and loot has not been raised to my level. The game needs some serious fixes.

Crafting is only ‘grindy’ if you don’t embrace discovery. Admittedly, that aspect of crafting should be explained a lot better – perhaps with some sort of tutorial to give players the general idea of what they should be doing.

My only issue with crafting is the annoying little items like vials of blood and claws and such. They’re few and far between and leveling is so quick that you quickly move beyond the area to get enough of a specific type to keep your crafted gear in line with your level.

Crafting is not grindy and it’s not expensive if you’re diligent about gathering. If you’re not, then you have no right to complain about the costs of materials. In fact, this game has one of the most strategic crafting games I’ve seen, due to the discovery bonus — which DOES make an enormous impact on your efficiency.

Honestly, I think these complaints are coming up because people haven’t taken the time to learn the system. That’s a player problem, not a system problem. They may not even realize that using some same-tier fine materials are better than others, in terms of XP and progress.

There’s plenty of depth in the system. Folks need to learn it instead of assuming it operates like another crafting system they’ve been exposed to.

ANet has to balance “lack of grind” with “there’s nothing to progress”.

So there’s still plenty of grind in the game, but they’ve just moved it to things that are completely optional. If you find crafting is boring and grindy, then don’t do it – ie. its optional.

Really, how can you make something that’s just based on numbers increasing non-grindy? Crafting will almost always be grindy to some extent.

Grindy? Expensive? Made me laugh. Stop comparing this crafting system to any other.
I didnt have any problems leveling my professions, if it was up to me, i would make it way harder to get lvl 400.

If you approach GW2’s crafting like any other MMO’s crafting, it’s absolutely grind-y and potentially expensive. You will quickly become frustrated and swear the system is dumb and worse.

However, if you shift your mindset, you will find crafting is a nice, fun diversion with ample rewards. You must make this shift in mindset — and it’s one that I will agree ANet needs to make a little clearer — much like the rest of the game requires a similar shift.

So, grab the items you need and give discovery a good go. I think you’ll find crafting far more rewarding once you do.

It’s kind of “meh” for me. I gather everything, and have since I had enough copper to buy my first set of tools but I’ve never been able to gather enough materials to make a level appropriate item in either leatherworking or huntsman except the bags (which by the way are poorly implemented due to materials cost and scarcity of leather drops), and cooking is quite frankly just a beat down with pretty poor rewards.

I have a bank full of intermediate “stuff” that I don’t want to throw away because getting the ingredients is so costly/grindy, and I can’t get rid of them because of the way discovery and gathering works. 8 bajillion ingredients that you find 2 of per year.

I gained something like 4 whole levels using materials I had gathered along the way, so it was never really a “grind” to me, but it’s far from rewarding to spend my time and silver doing it, so… meh. I check the crafting station every few days to see if I have anything gathered up for sigils or runes or whatever they’re called.

If I’ve lucked into getting enough claws, or blood or whatever, I’ll make one and “discover” with it, but other than cooking, I’m not discovering anything. I already know the recipe. I just have to gather the mats to be able to do it.

Meh.

you don’t have to grind at all. you can work a 2nd job at mcdonalds part time craft and gear up fully without grinding at all, and far more time effectively than actually playing the game itself.

you aren’t meant to grind, and if you try to do so you will be penalized for doing it. if you have only 2 hours to play you will only be able to have fun progressing for half that time at 80 before the forced downtime kicks in.

i spent $80 on gems for gold to level my crafting augmented by leveling casually. now i know i should’ve simply not crafted at all and used those gems to buy the best exotics in the game at 80.

and tbh all i wanted to do was craft myself and guildies bags. but the singular main cost of bags is the vendor mat, and $20 per 20 slot bag just isn’t happening. even for myself alone.

a 20 slot bag would take maybe a single dungeon run in wow, but instead here it will take a week of grinding with hours per night of casual sessions spent in forced downtime mode.

takes the joy out of crafting for sure.

Naattori.9378:

Ever heard of discovery? Put few pieces in there and see what happens. It rewards you with load of XP and a new recipe. Never level crafting in GW2 like in WoW, use discovery. Period.

Discovery indeed is a great way at leveling crafting – up to a point.

Often not, the player levels too fast for crafting to be of use for his current level. Another problem is that in order to level crafting one needs mats. In order to obtain these mats one must grind and kill numerous different mobs for said mats. This results in the player once again out leveling the usefulness of crafting all in attempt at obtaining a measly scale.

While working for mats isn’t a problem in itself, the amount of mats needed to create for example 1 master insignia, is currently a little high.

Thus the whole cycle becomes one large straneous grind, where the player will often not be able to craft level appropriate items due to not having enough of the proper materials to level his craft.

The grind now begins.

Vigilence.4902:

Naattori.9378:

Ever heard of discovery? Put few pieces in there and see what happens. It rewards you with load of XP and a new recipe. Never level crafting in GW2 like in WoW, use discovery. Period.

Discovery indeed is a great way at leveling crafting – up to a point.

Often not, the player levels too fast for crafting to be of use for his current level. Another problem is that in order to level crafting one needs mats. In order to obtain these mats one must grind and kill numerous different mobs for said mats. This results in the player once again out leveling the usefulness of crafting all in attempt at obtaining a measly scale.

While working for mats isn’t a problem in itself, the amount of mats needed to create for example 1 master insignia, is currently a little high.

Thus the whole cycle becomes one large straneous grind, where the player will often not be able to craft level appropriate items due to not having enough of the proper materials to level his craft.

The grind now begins.

and once you find the mobs that drop the mats you need and start farming them, guess what? a half hour down the road nothing but grey trash for a half hour.

The problem with crafting (and I’ve maxed two crafting professions – tailoring and jewelcrafting) is that the fine materials are a pain to get. I’ve gone through more gathering tools and salvage kits than I could hope to count, but the fine mats are what stopped me every time.

The problem with them is that they’re random drops that have low drop rates. Your only options with them are to 1) find the mobs that drop the mats you need and farm them and hope you get lucky, or 2) pay the ridiculous prices on the trade post.

It kind of really sucks. I love crafting, but I hate how easy it is to get stonewalled because some of the mats you need are sokittenhard to find and sokittenexpensive to buy. I really hope that they take a look at the drop rates on those and make it so that crafting is actually a true viable alternate to simply buying gear, as I definitely prefer making my own stuff.

This crafting system is most uninspired standard copy from your average MMO.

Discovery is hardly fun like that. Recipes are very predictable 90% of the time. Only cooking surprises you with something unexpected.

dirtyklingon.2918:

Vigilence.4902:

Naattori.9378:

Ever heard of discovery? Put few pieces in there and see what happens. It rewards you with load of XP and a new recipe. Never level crafting in GW2 like in WoW, use discovery. Period.

Discovery indeed is a great way at leveling crafting – up to a point.

Often not, the player levels too fast for crafting to be of use for his current level. Another problem is that in order to level crafting one needs mats. In order to obtain these mats one must grind and kill numerous different mobs for said mats. This results in the player once again out leveling the usefulness of crafting all in attempt at obtaining a measly scale.

While working for mats isn’t a problem in itself, the amount of mats needed to create for example 1 master insignia, is currently a little high.

Thus the whole cycle becomes one large straneous grind, where the player will often not be able to craft level appropriate items due to not having enough of the proper materials to level his craft.

The grind now begins.

and once you find the mobs that drop the mats you need and start farming them, guess what? a half hour down the road nothing but grey trash for a half hour.

Yeah, the drop rate is definitely an issue as well.

Derpinator.2894:

It’s kind of “meh” for me. I gather everything, and have since I had enough copper to buy my first set of tools but I’ve never been able to gather enough materials to make a level appropriate item in either leatherworking or huntsman except the bags (which by the way are poorly implemented due to materials cost and scarcity of leather drops), and cooking is quite frankly just a beat down with pretty poor rewards.

I have a bank full of intermediate “stuff” that I don’t want to throw away because getting the ingredients is so costly/grindy, and I can’t get rid of them because of the way discovery and gathering works. 8 bajillion ingredients that you find 2 of per year.

I gained something like 4 whole levels using materials I had gathered along the way, so it was never really a “grind” to me, but it’s far from rewarding to spend my time and silver doing it, so… meh. I check the crafting station every few days to see if I have anything gathered up for sigils or runes or whatever they’re called.

If I’ve lucked into getting enough claws, or blood or whatever, I’ll make one and “discover” with it, but other than cooking, I’m not discovering anything. I already know the recipe. I just have to gather the mats to be able to do it.

Meh.

I really think what you said sums it up perfectly. If you happen to have a boatload of all the materials it might be worth it to craft. For all the silver you are spending, your’re unlikely to craft much useful.

It doesn’t take long to outgrow armor /weapons that you craft. I’ve found it more effective to just kill mobs that are 3-5 levels above me and equip the drops. Every 5th level I’d buy any weapons or armor that was better than what I had equipped. Which became rare for me to have to do.

Jewelry probably is worth it at some point in time. If you play for any length of time you’ll probably be flooded with materials and gold. (just gather as you go)That is when I’d spend the time and money on crafting.

By the time you’re level 70, farming karma for exotics and doing dungeons for legendary will take up the bulk of your playtime. Crafting becomes an unproductive distraction at that point. One that you may want to revisit down the road though.

I’ve only done cooking, but I haven’t had much luck with discovery. It’s neat, and I do it as much as possible, but (every 25 pt tier) it only nets me a few points, and I still end up needing to grind the other 20 points, before a few new discovery possibilities open up.

Like many things in a game i think there was a certain ‘budget’ available for developing the crafting system. I think this meant that they figured out a crafting system that was somewhat like recognizable crafting systems from other games, and added a bit of flavor (discovery & XP system) to it, and then left it at that seeing the budget was spend and the system largely worked…

For crafting enthusiast though, well, I can’t say i am too impressed … the discovery is realy nice, but in essence it’s still the boring linear (grind) tree. And without a doubt the actual crafting interface quickly turns into a mess. It’s linearity is also largely disappointing, no interesting mixing of materials (low level + high level), although some ‘upgrading’ of low level materials (mainly in jewelcrafting) has been a nice thought.

The main problem i have sofar with the crafting system though, is that there is NO choice for design. With that i mean that all the armor made by crafting is of design X, and if that is not your style, well, tough luck… (atleast for the levels of which i have unlocked the items this seems to be the case) … this is somewhat dissappointing, as i given 2 different ways to accomplish diversity in crafting, that would both work with the system that is in place now:

1. The use of tools in the actual crafting system, the tools would represent a certain design. One would make the components, add them to the crafting window, pick a tool, and the end result would be Design X,Y,Z based upon tool X,Y,Z..
(or)
2. Use the components themselves to represent different entities of the armor, the outside component could determain the design (and some stats), while the inside component would determain the level requirement (and some stats).

Both these systems could have given the crafters ways to craft diffent looking armor, for all levels (and thus these would be unlocked during gameplay, tools by finding them in the world, the other just naturaly by crafting and discovery)…

Another thing that i find realy annoying, and possibly the biggest let down for myself, is the use of the recipe list. I personally want to interact with the various resources and components every time. Basically i want to have the discovery pane, and use it for my crafting as well. And i gave an actual visualisation of how the crafting system would look in such a system on this forum, during one of the BWE’s. It still let people craft from a list though, if they so choose

But, all in all i am glad there is crafting in GW2, seeing there wasn’t much of it in GW1 :P … and i have faith that as we all move forward the crafting system will change and improve