This is a side note but why does this game use subcombines in crafting when they are completely pointless and add nothing? I got a tailoring recipe for shadow gear that just uses an insignia and wool and that’s how all recipes should be – skip the unnecessary BS. Even the insignia/inscription pieces are a waste of time and add nothing. If you smelt 100 ore into 50 ingots it goes super fast due to game/UI conveniences….but subcombines are a messy unfun timesink…this makes no sense.
Anyways.
- - This game suffers from recipe bloat as do many games and while it does have a search feature and filters, it would be nice if the crafting UI would retain the state of the UI in regards to collapse and expand of sections in the recipe list. If I collapse my greatsword section on my weaponsmith, I want that to stay collapsed forever until I expand it again – that kind of thing. There’s little point to having collapsable sections if they revert every time you close the window.
As a side note on recipe bloat…another of ANet’s fantasy BS statements (like legendaries only having different appearances or no gear tiers and grind) was that crafted gear would be useful – could be used or sold to players and that you wouldn’t just do combines for skill.
8 lvl 400 crafts later and I can assure you that 95% of the things I made were for skill only and got vendored or broken for crap returns because nobody wants to buy the crap, you can’t sell it for more than vendor cost most of the time, and/or the stuff is useless because you can buy better for next to nothing in the TP.
So, most of the garbage bloating up the recipe list is utterly useless trash recipes that could just not be there. Maybe give us the option to hide recipes forever? I could cut my recipe list by 80% if I removed all the blues I made for skill that I will NEVER make again (hiding all blues kinda works here but there are a scant few I might make for an alt before 14 when greens are dirt cheap every 6 levels).
Or maybe actually design and impliment the system you envisioned and talked about where we wouldn’t just make a bunch of useless garbage for skill only.
- - Material summaries on tooltips. I have all crafts at 400 and lead a guild. I make stuff for guildies. It is ALWAYS a hassle when they ask me “what are the mats for X” because I have to drill down thru every subcomponent involved and summarize the mats manually, painfully, and slowly.
What I would like is for the tooltip for the recipe or the recipe itself to summarize this stuff for me – you know, I’d like my UI and computer to actually COMPUTE and be useful, shocking as that may seem. So when I hover over or look at my exotic axe berserker’s recipe, it shows me that I need 5 ectos, 5 bloods, 36 ori, and 36 ancient wood (instead of me having to drill down thru the inscription, the axe head, the handle, the ingots, the planks).
Yeah, you do end up memorizing some of this eventually and I have a phenominal memory but most people who don’t craft all the time do not, and every time they want something made you have to go thru the process again.
I tell some people to just use guildhead to look up the mats they need to send me, because at least there you can pop links for subcomponents into new windows/tabs and add it up that way rather than keeping a running mental total of various mats while skipping thru it all.
The problem is, most MMORPG players have ADD, zero patience, and/or instant gratification syndrome, and they don’t want to look up this stuff, they want you to just tell them, and when you start babbling/writing off all of this crap their eyes glaze even without monumental delays due to having to look up all the subcombine mats. So, they end up wasting money buying stuff instead of having it made since the whole process is a hassle.
Not all bad for me, I sell a lot of exotic weapons for pitiful profits in this games pathetic economy…it’s something I’ve relied on for years (players being too lazy to use crafters and buying finished products instead).
- - Since we do have subcomponents and huge recipe lists – link between the stuff. If I’m looking at the recipe for an axe and it involves an inscription, I should be able to click on the inscription somehow and get to the recipe for the inscription immediately instead of having to scroll up down all over incessantly to look up every freaking component. And I should be able to get back to where I just was without playing hide and seek with a monster recipe list.
There’s a good reason why so many information packed media use linked navigation – it works well. Make it so! (or better yet, ditch uselss subcombines and give us the summary tooltips mentioned in #2 so this isn’t necessary)