Economics are making crafting irrelevant
2/2
Let’s start with demand. What drives demand is the players. They need gears to allow them to advance and be able to face new challenges in GW2. They can purchase their gears from the market, craft them as needed, obtain them from loot or purchase them from computer controlled merchants. If we were in a perfect market, players would obtain their gears from the cheapest possible alternative for each specific good. Unfortunately, GW2 is not a perfect market, some information is hidden, i.e. players don’t know at every point in time where to find the cheapest alternative to obtain a wanted good, and some gears are harder to obtain than others, i.e. some merchants are accessible only if a difficult enemy is defeated. The objective of any solution that aims at making the crafting system more relevant should increase the relative price or difficulty of obtaining goods from loot and computer controlled merchants in comparison to goods crafted by players either for themselves or sold on the market. A good way of achieving this is to change the nature of loot and merchandise from computer controlled merchants from finished, useful goods to crafting or salvageable materials. This would allow players uninterested by crafting to supply the market with crafting goods and give players who are interested in crafting a market for their crafted goods. Now, all kind of testing and adjustments needs to be done in order to do it correctly. Should you wish to go that way,
you will know that you have done the right adjustments when the price of most finished goods is slightly higher than the price of the ingredients used to craft them.
The other inconsistency I have observed, advanced crafting material being cheaper than lower-tier crafting material, stem from a supply issues. I assume that there is more lvl 80 characters in GW2 than any other level in the game. Also, assuming that lvl 80 characters play in zones designed for them, they will mostly collect tier 5 or 6 crafting materials.
This creates an overabundance of high level material compared to lower-level material. A good way to remediate this situation would necessitate two changes. First, we need to modify recipes for basic materials to stay relevant at every stage of progression and increasing the difficulties and costs of crafting by managing the quantities of crafting materials needed instead of the qualities. As an example for leatherworking, a first tier item would only necessitate rawhide leather and jute to be crafted, a second tier item would still need rawhide leather and jute, although in larger quantities plus thin leather and wool in small quantities, a third tier item would need even larger quantities of rawhide leather and jute, some thin leather and wool and a few coarse leather and cotton and so on. Second, we need to modify the supply of each material, from loot and nodes to accommodate the new scheme. This scheme would require massive amounts of lower tier material and somewhat lesser amounts of higher tier materials. One way of enabling that would be to include more variety in nodes and increase the yield of nodes and salvage items based on the quality of the gathering tool/salvage kit. As an example, an orichalcum mining pick would wield more iron from iron nodes than a copper mining pick. Obviously, fine tuning and testing is required, in order to determine which quantity should be given, you can adjust supply (loot) and demand (recipes) according to a targeted price.
Finally, I am very much for trade and I don’t see the necessity of having bound crafting materials (i.e. lemons). I don’t really see the point. But that’s my opinion; there is no inherent harm in having a few bound materials.
I knew this post would be long from the get go but it is already longer than I expected. Should you feel the need to comment or ask questions, I am happy to complete my thoughts or answer questions in a subsequent post. Please leave your opinion or corrections if you feel I am wrong. I am proposing these changes to improve an activity I like doing (crafting) in a game I like playing (GW2). I know there are other considerations than economics in such a game but I don’t think the changes I am proposing would alter too drastically gameplay and I think they would make the crafting system so much more relevant and fun.
Thanks for reading.
…
This scheme would require massive amounts of lower tier material and somewhat lesser amounts of higher tier materials. One way of enabling that would be to include more variety in nodes and increase the yield of nodes and salvage items based on the quality of the gathering tool/salvage kit. As an example, an orichalcum mining pick would wield more iron from iron nodes than a copper mining pick. Obviously, fine tuning and testing is required, in order to determine which quantity should be given, you can adjust supply (loot) and demand (recipes) according to a targeted price.
…
I was with you until here. What you are proposing is more scaling in the materials necessity and availability in the game overall, and while I agree that some of this is necessary, I don’t think you are going to get the intended price changes in any of the tiers of material via this method.
The materials prices should scale with the characters who are choosing to craft their own gear, as an alternative to buying it on the TP or from a vendor, but this will create more expensive crafted items at all levels. And lower-level material prices will go quite mad with the new requirements, because even with the higher yield of the upper level harvesting equipment, their is the increase in cost of said equipment AND opportunity cost in harvesting from the lower levels, if you choose to do so yourself.
This would provide an opportunity for lower-level toons to make more off harvested materials, but still wouldn’t offset the higher cost of their crafted gear, whether they make it or someone else does, because as you said, gear is available at NPCs all over the map. This would leave crafters even farther out in the cold, at least for lower levels.
The main issue that I can see is the dip in prices at Tier 5, where the abundance of available material and the low frequency of material promotion (from the mystic toilet) generate massive price deflation in every area with the exception of the shards, cores and Lodestones sought after for special upgrades and gear.
This Tier 6 base crafting material rarity is by all means by intent. It is the time and gold sink necessary to keep things like legendary weapons and what not as super-rare as plausible, yet there are many ways to go about acquiring these mats, as you said yourself, gathering in the maps, salvaging from drops, buys from the TP all of which cost the buyer in one of the aforementioned sinks.
I was able to craft all of my first exotic set of gear from just what I had collected and/or sold before I had run one dungeon, because I knew what people were looking for on the TP for their upgrades in gear, and a crafted that when I could all the way up to 80. I leveled jeweler and leather within 2 weeks of hitting 80, and when I needed to adjust my build, I generally used the Karma Armor, because I had a lot of that too, and was saving gold.
The market evens out, and with both sides of the supply/demand equation being supplemented by secondary markets (dungeon tokens/laurels/karma/gold for gear vs. Nodes/NPCs/salvage/drops from mobs/etc. for materials) you will ALWAYS have higher material costs with the exception of the dip in the middle (because the tier 5 gear isn’t in high demand), and thus 90% of crafting would not actually make any profits. In this case, if you buy or even passively farm the mid to upper tier crafting materials, you can make a profit from several types of crafted gear. This goes for most MMOs in my limited experience.
For a break down, here is a listing with profit calculations.
http://www.gw2spidy.com/crafting/5?sort_profit=desc
Here is the recipe for the first (at the time of writing this) listing the Satchel of Apothecaries Emblazoned Armor [exotic leather] with the price currently both ask and spread.
http://www.gw2db.com/items/74234-recipe-satchel-of-apothecarys-emblazoned-armor
And the moral of this is: Buy Recipes when they are available, especially for berserker’s (critz fo daiz) or unusual (like giver’s) type gear.
============
In the real world, nobody makes hammers out of glass, they look for the demanded tool and material, or in rare case’s they anticipate the demanded tool and material, then bring that item to market and keep the price reasonable.
GW2’s market mechanic is the same way.
Miss Fisthammer – Engineer | Urgard Fistorsen – Guardian
Physti – Elementalist | Fistful of Blades – Thief
[WHIP] Quaggan Slavers – HoD
Physti – Elementalist | Fistful of Blades – Thief
[WHIP] Quaggan Slavers – HoD
Perhaps I have not been too clear about the implications of scaling and I see why you think it is not too good an idea. However, I believe that if done properly, like having collection tools and salvage kits level dependant, we could make it work. The other way I thought of making lower tier material relevant is to allow transformation into higher tier level material, that way, lvl 5 tier material could be transformed into lvl 6 tier material and be used for lengendary item crafting.
I was unaware of those sites, thanks for the tip. However, what I see there is still mostly irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is to make crafting, all of it, more relevant. The items listed as profitable are mostly items where it is hard to obtain the recipe, therefore having an higher entry cost than other crafted items. This can work only as long as most people do not bother to find those hard to come by recipe. At this point, crafting will become irrelevant again, even for those items.
OMG! And I thought I made walls of text! O.o Remind me to go easier on people in the future.
Or be more entertaining…
I skimmed through about half was what you wrote and I think you’re only seeing part of the problem. There are other reasons crafting is as profitable as it is in other MMOs. One is that just about everything drops armor and weapons and those drops are extremely frequent. You can kill a centaur and get a blue, green or even yellow quality staff. With the change to meta event chests, you have lots of guaranteed yellows! Some people will salvage these for ectos but there are those like me whom the RNG gods have cursed since birth and will sell what they can’t use because it’s more profitable. This means there is a flood of unwanted weapons on the market that people are selling, just to get rid of them. If there is no demand for those items, and there really is little to no demand for anything lower than rare, then the prices will drop to reflect that. Yet there are people that will STILL put it on the market because it’s easier to dump it all in one place than to go through it and sell it.
You may not think so and I use to think the same but, during City of Heroes (may it rest in peace) reign, I could easily buy good recipes of the market for dirt cheap prices. Then I’d sell those same recipes to npcs and make 50 to 400% profit. The same thing is happening in Guild Wars 2 except the game stops people from posting things at prices lower then what they could sell to npcs at. However, it doesn’t stop people from losing up to 15% because of the fees involved and I see MANY listing that will do just that.
Ugh! Wall of text already.
Here’s the second part, quick and dirty. People often craft to level crafting, which in turn, levels their character. That is more important then what they are actually creating so there is a surplus of unneeded stuff that they shove on the market. The law of supply and demand takes over.
All that being said, there are a few craftables that are profitable. Berzerker gear is usually one of them but the components for berzerker gear are usually worth more because they have a larger demand. For instance, not everyone wants a berzerker split armor helm but they will be interested in the berzerker insignia that makes it because it can be be used to create something they do want. See if you can find more trends like this.
Another factor that causes Materials to outweigh the cost of Crafted goods is the quantity required per item. As you get higher into crafting you start using more and more of each material per item, The result usually comes out as the cost of the crafting materials alone for that item are more expensive than the equivalent item sold by a vendor. When that happens you have 2 options when selling it, Option A) Take the loss and sell it around vendor price, or Option B) Demand a profit and wait ages for the item to sell at a price that no one will ever buy it at.
So, realistically, your suggestion of up-scaling the quantity of materials in higher recipes will actually further imbalance the crafting economy. What actually would need to be done is to reduce the quantities required on many items.
Item’s relevance vrs quantity of materials is also a factor. Take a comparison of a Bag and a Chest Armor. The chest armor requires 2 prerequisite components to be crafted each costing 1-2 cloth and leather components to make the end result is that you expended maybe 5 or 6 materials total on that Chest Armor. You then go to craft a Bag and it costs 10 cloth. You might be able to get a profit off that Armor if it provided useful stats and was of a rare or higher quality or has a popular skin. But the Bag you’d be lucky to get even half your money back on it since it’s not as relevant to the majority of players as that Armor might be.
There are actually a few things that they can do to breath some life into Crafting again and make it profitable through all level ranges.
1) Keep materials per item at LOW quantities. No one wants to or should spend 50-1500 of any material type on a single crafted item (besides Legendary Weapons)
2) Create more unique skins to Crafted items.
3) Add an positive RNG component to all tiers of crafting. What this RNG will do is give you a random chance to craft random bonus stats into an item, as well as a random chance to craft the item at a higher quality thus increasing it’s stats across the board.
I think if these 3 things were done then crafting would become a viable source of profit as it should have been.
Please stop assuming I’m a guy… I am female.
simplest solution is to adjust the base merchant value – NOT the TP value, but the base merch value, to reflect the current TP price of the mats involved. Not only would you always be guaranteed a return of your investment, but the TP prices would be (necessarily) higher than the merch price.